


Bright and Bitter, Pure and Sweet

by Caelum_Blue



Series: Gilded Green [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Ba Sing Se, Domestic Fluff, Earth Kingdom, Earthbending & Earthbenders, Family, Gen, Qingming, Siblings, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-03 03:45:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8695132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caelum_Blue/pseuds/Caelum_Blue
Summary: Set immediately post-Gilded Green.Dai Li Director Quy Dai has had a long, exhausting day of dealing with a brainwashed Firebender. Now it’s Qingming, and he has a family to tend to and ancestors to honor. Featuring domestic fluff, filial piety, the messed-up war that totally doesn't exist, earthball, history buffs, and entirely too many arguments about pottery.





	1. In Which Quy Comes Home

**Author's Note:**

> AHAHA SO. Look, I've finally written another fic in the GG'verse! Unfortunately, this isn't the long-planned GG 2 that I've been slamming my head against for the past five years, this is more like......GG 1.5, and it snuck up on me sometime last autumn, sank its teeth into me this past January, and didn't let go until I'd written over 30k words for it. So CONGRATULATIONS, instead of getting a story about brainwashed!Dai Li!Lu Ten dealing with PAPERWORK and BUREAUCRACY, you get five chapters of my beloved OC family being adorkable.
> 
> I'd apologize, except I'm not sorry at all because actually I really love how this story turned out, and I hope you love it too. The members of the Dai-Sai-Trung family are some of my many, many OC babies, and it was nice getting to exercise these characters.
> 
> WARNINGS FOR  
> -Mentions of brainwashing  
> -Allusions to Ba Sing Se being kinda messed up  
> -Mentions of past war crimes and genocide  
> -Mentions of past rape  
> -A character born out of rape  
> -A character who sees suicide as a viable option should everything go horribly wrong
> 
> Many thanks to Stingrae for betaing this and being there with me every step of the way while I developed the story and characters and cried because the words didn't wanna cooperate, and to Silver, who's been a fantastic fan of GG (she made a TV Tropes page! http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FanFic/GildedGreen) and who was a huge help with my cultural questions.

It was well into the night by the time the train reached the Upper Ring. Quy disembarked with an exhausted grace and headed out of the station, the few people milling about either politely or nervously stepping out of his way when they saw his uniform. He paid them no mind. He was tired - mentally  _ and _ emotionally - and he wanted to go  _ home _ . Home, where his family was, and where he could relax and rest after this headache-inducing day, and where, most importantly, there were no brainwashed Firebenders to worry about.

There’d been enough time on the train ride for Quy to think in circles about what had possessed him to save Shirong’s pet project. He’d had his reasons to offer Shirong his help. Quy  _ liked _ Shirong, for one thing, although at the moment his feelings towards the man could be summed up as  _ aggravated _ . And as much as Quy appreciated Yong’s brutally efficient leadership as a Dai Li director and understood the necessity of some of the man’s less savory methods, he was still leery of the idea of just giving him someone to be disposed of in whatever creative ways Yong could think up. Quy was the Dai Li’s Director of Administration and no stranger to interrogation methods. Torture was useful - a lot of information would never have made it into Administration’s files without it, hell, a lot of agents would be  _ dead _ without it - but on an already-brainwashed prisoner of war who had no information to give, it was just sadistic. Quy was no sadist, and he couldn’t bring himself to condemn any prisoner to a painful, messy death. 

Even if that prisoner was a Firebender.

Even if Quy knew for a  _ fact _ that the Fire Nation would have no qualms being so merciless towards an Earthbender in their custody.

That was the other thing. As easy as it was to tell himself that he’d just wanted to help Shirong, that he didn’t want to encourage Yong’s sadistic streak, Quy still had plenty of reasons to  _ not _ want to help the Firebender. 

And all of those reasons were waiting for him back at his house.

Quy paused outside on the train station’s steps and looked down at the carriages parked on the street, waiting for passengers. He usually took one home, but sometimes he preferred the walk - it was only half a mile, and it gave him time to unwind, time to think.

It was a beautiful spring night, and there was a brainwashed Firebender under Lake Laogai. Quy could use the walk.

He could also use the rest. He was tired.

His mind was made up for him as he descended the steps toward the street, and one of the cabbies suddenly waved at him. Quy recognized the man as Ly Nanyue, one of his favorite drivers, and he waved back, heading toward the carriage. He was tired. He wanted to go home. And he’d feel mildly guilty if he didn’t give Ly some work.

“Where to, sir?” Ly asked, hopping down from his seat as Quy approached. He opened the carriage’s door and watched Quy stumble in and flop down on the seat. “Straight home?” he surmised.

“Yes, please,” Quy sighed.

Ly gave a sharp nod. “No problem, sir,” he said, shutting the door. “Dusty and I’ll have you there in just a bit.” He clambered back into the driver’s seat, and Quy heard him snap orders to his ostrich-horse. A second later the carriage was moving. Quy leaned back and watched the city pass by the window.

The Upper Ring was beautiful, all lit up at night. Lanterns twinkled their way down the streets, beaming down on lovely houses tucked into manicured gardens, their windows all alight. The air was pleasantly cool, with only the slightest breeze that carried the faint scent of flowers, and the sky above was clear and spattered with stars.

The streets, however, were empty, save for a few people out for a quiet stroll. Normally there was more activity, even at this late hour - it  _ was _ the weekend, after all. But this weekend happened to be the start of Qingming, and tomorrow was Tomb Sweeping Day. Ba Sing Se’s citizens were all at home with their families, preparing for the morning’s tasks of dutifully tending to graves and remembering the dead. All was calm and peaceful as the carriage made its way down the street; here in the Upper Ring, there truly was no war in Ba Sing Se.

A shadow on a rooftop caught Quy’s attention, and glancing up as they passed he just barely saw the silhouette of a Dai Li agent watching the streets below. Quy silently wished the man a quiet night. It probably would be. The Upper Ring was well-known for being the nice, boring patrol area.

The carriage finally reached Quy’s house, and he heard Ly talking to his ostrich-horse as he pulled to a stop. “Whoa, Dusty, whoa, there’s a good girl.” Then he was opening the door. “Here we are, sir.”

“Thank you, Ly,” Quy said, pressing some money into the man’s hand as he disembarked - the usual fare, plus some extra. Ly was a refugee from Nanyue, the same province Quy’s mother had come from. The Nanyuese looked out for their own - Quy’s mother especially. Ly didn’t call him  _ sir _ because of Quy’s position in the Dai Li.

“Thank  _ you _ , sir,” Ly said, pocketing the coin. He paused, then added quietly, “And a good Thanh Minh to you and yours.”

Quy paused as well, looking at his front gate. Qingming was what the Earth Kingdom in general called it, but the provinces often had their own names for such things. In Nanyue Qingming had been called Thanh Minh, and the Nanyuese had kept the name long after they’d lost their homeland.

For the rest of the Earth Kingdom, the holiday was a mix of sadness and celebration. Yes, there was loss - loved ones were mourned, graves were tended, and prayers were sent to ancestors. But there was also life - families gathered together, kites were flown, the weather finally turned nice, and this was the time of year that young couples often began properly courting each other. For the people of Nanyue, however, Qingming and the Thanh Minh Festival only marked the beginning of a much more painful time period.

It was less than a month to the anniversary of the massacre.

“A good Thanh Minh to you as well, Ly,” Quy said softly. He tried to remember if Ly had ever told him who he’d lost. He didn’t think so, but Ly  _ had _ lost someone. Everyone who’d survived the massacre had.

Ly nodded. “Have a good night, sir.” He hopped back onto his carriage and clicked the reins.

“Good night,” Quy said. He listened to Ly’s carriage rattle off into the night before he headed through the ornate gate that led into the Dai residence.

Quy had been born and raised here, in the house his father’s family had called home since Avatar Kyoshi’s time. The Dais were an old Dai Li family that could trace their heritage back to the organization’s roots - their oldest ancestors had been trained by Kyoshi herself, handpicked by the Avatar to preserve Ba Sing Se’s cultural heritage. They’d taken part of the organization’s name as their own, they’d steadfastly served as its agents for generations, and in many cases their family history and the history of the Dai Li was one and the same.

The house itself was old and elegant, filled with artwork and pieces of cultural interest that the Dai family had collected over the centuries. By Upper Ring standards, it was rather large in size - not as large as some nobles’ sprawling estates, of course, but there were three courtyards and plenty of hallways and rooms for the family to live in. This was a good thing, because the family was as large as the house was.

When Quy stumbled inside, however, only his wife was sitting in the receiving room, nose in a book. Roulan glanced up from her reading, and she looked both relieved and disappointed when she saw him. “Ah,” she said, setting the book aside and standing. “It’s you.”

“It’s me,” Quy agreed. “I take it you’re waiting up for Kun?”

“Who else keeps odd hours?” she sighed, coming toward him. “I asked him when he’d be home, and he was all ‘Mooooom, you know I can’t tell you anything, it’s classified and the plan changes half the time anyway.’ So annoying.”

“The life of an Investigations agent is rough and lacking in sleep,” Quy said sagely. “I’m sure he’s fine, wherever he is. And he knows he needs to show up tomorrow for tomb sweeping, or else my mother will give him an earful.”

“That she will,” Roulan hummed, wrapping Quy in an embrace. She was already in her nightclothes, and her long hair was unbound and fell straight down her back. “You look awful. And you’re back late. Rough day?”

“You have no idea,” he sighed. “We had  _ stacks _ of farmer files to update this morning, then the meeting ran long...then I had to run  _ back _ to the lake to take care of something…” That  _ something _ had been a brainwashed Firebender, and Quy really,  _ really _ did not want to think about that right now.

Fortunately, Roulan was good at providing distraction. “That sounds awful,” she said, and she kissed him.

After a long moment, Quy pulled back and touched his forehead to hers, careful to rest the brim of his hat on the crown of her head so he didn’t hit her with it. “Not so awful now,” he said quietly.

Roulan smiled. “Good.” She plucked his hat from his head and stroked his hair. “Come on. The rest of us ate already, but there’s still plenty of food. Did you eat at all? Are you hungry?”

“Yes,” Quy realized. He was. They strolled toward the kitchen, arm in arm, and Quy glanced up and down the hallways as they passed through. He  _ was _ hungry, yes, but...food didn’t seem so important at the moment.

There was a brainwashed Firebender back at the Lake who didn’t realize how much he should miss his family, and there was a man somewhere in the Fire Nation mourning a son he didn’t realize wasn’t dead but really might as well be.

Quy didn’t want to think about the Firebender, but his family...he could think about his family.

“Where are the kids?”

Roulan gave him an amused look. “It’s late, Quy. Most of us  _ do _ keep regular work schedules, you know. Sunan and Wenli went to bed a while ago. Zan might still be up making preparations for tomorrow, though I think she was almost finished. Kun, no idea, of course.”

Quy gave her a reassuring smile. “He’s alright.”

“I know,” she said, with all the assurance of a woman who’d personally taught her son how to down someone with a single pebble. They reached the kitchen. “Come on then, we’ve still got plenty of Klahan’s roast duck. And your mother and Tien made a lot of rice balls to get a head start on tomorrow. I’m sure they won’t mind if we nick a few. I’ll get some tea going.”

They wound up sitting on the porch outside of the kitchen, a pot of hot oolong and a plate of cold duck and rice balls between them. They picked at the food as they watched the moths dance around the lanterns in the courtyard and chatted about their day.

“Delun’s talking about doing an exhibit on Avatar Kyoshi,” Roulan said. “As in, an actual, proper exhibit, with artifacts and information. Not a shrine.”

Quy frowned. “That...might not go over well.” Kyoshi was important, and revered, and certainly deserved a museum exhibit, but...to devote so much attention to one Avatar might only cause people to question where the last one had disappeared to. Which in turn might lead to whispers of the war. “I don’t think Long Feng would like that idea.”

“I know that,” Roulan said. “Delun knows that. That’s not going to stop him from proposing it, though.”

“Of course not,” Quy sighed, already not looking forward to next week’s directors’ meeting.

Roulan smiled and sipped her tea. “There’s a  _ reason _ I chose him as my successor as Head of Preservation. Anyway, even if he does manage to get it approved, I just know he’ll go about it the wrong way. He never does give Atuqtuaq enough credit.”

“No one ever gives Atuqtuaq enough credit,” Quy said. “Most people can’t even  _ pronounce _ ‘Atuqtuaq’.” Kyoshi’s husband had been Water Tribe, and the Earth Kingdom historical community tended to agree that this fact was an interesting tidbit showcasing Kyoshi’s relations with the other nations before refocusing on her relationship with her Earth Kingdom wife.

“No matter,” Roulan said. “I already have a response prepared for when Delun inevitably publishes another paper where he discusses Kyoshi and Midori’s relationship at length and reduces Atuqtuaq to a footnote. Would you like to hear it?”

“Do I?” Quy sighed.

“Don’t worry, I’m keeping it short. It reads:  _ It has come to my attention that an esteemed colleague has managed to entirely ignore Avatar Kyoshi’s relationship to Northern Water Tribesman Atuqtuaq while focusing exclusively on her relationship to Warrior Midori, thus also ignoring the triadic nature of their marriage. While I do agree with this revered scholar on the importance of Warrior Midori in history and the impact she had on Avatar Kyoshi, I must point out that Atuqtuaq was equally important - and in ways beyond the fact of his fathering of Avatar Kyoshi’s daughter Koko -  _ ”

“You know he’ll just respond with a tangent about how Koko could just as well be Midori’s daughter.”

“No, he’ll likely retort with something along the lines of  _ My esteemed colleague is only so invested in the nature of Avatar Kyoshi’s triadic marriage because of her own three-way relationship _ , and then I’ll respond with an insinuation that I have led a much more fulfilling sex life than he could ever hope to achieve.”

“ _ Roulan _ _!_ ” Quy snapped, but he was laughing.

“You know Solada would get a kick out of it,” she grinned. “Also I just want to see Delun’s reaction to that.”

“ _ Why _ did you make him Head of Preservation?” Quy grinned.

“Because he’s brilliant and devoted,” Roulan said. “And because I was sick and tired of dealing with Long Feng.” She picked at her rice ball. “So, how was your day?”

Quy’s smile dropped. “Boring,” he said. “Very boring.” Well, not exactly - a highly classified brainwashed Firebender could hardly be called  _ boring _ \- but that seemed like the safest response. There were a lot of things that happened at work that Quy couldn’t tell his wife about, but he’d  _ tell _ her that he couldn’t tell her, so that she at least knew something was up.  _ Classified _ , he’d say, or  _ It’s above your clearance level _ , or  _ I can’t talk about it but it was awful and can you please just hold me for a while _ . With the Firebender, however...Quy didn’t want Roulan to know  _ anything _ was amiss in this case. “Today was long and tedious and utterly  _ boring _ .”

Roulan smiled. “That’s good, then,” she said, leaning against his shoulder. “You could use some boring days. Remember when  _ every _ day in the Dai Li was boring?”

Quy snorted as he picked at the last of the duck. “While I agree that Long Feng’s administration has been nothing short of a runaway train ride, I would  _ not _ call Minister Zian’s administration  _ boring _ .”

“It was in  _ comparison _ ,” Roulan said, watching him finish off the food.

The plate was empty, but neither of them made a move to get up. The night was silent, save for a few cricket-mice chirps and frog-shrew croaks and the occasional splash from the koi pond. Moths fluttered in the lantern-light that lit up the courtyard gardens, and a few stray fireflies - the first Quy’d seen yet this season - floated over the irises. Overhead, the full moon sailed in the sky, giving off a gentle glow.

“We should get to bed,” Roulan murmured eventually. “Important day tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Quy said quietly.

They dropped the plate and teapot off in the kitchen before heading toward their bedroom. Roulan held Quy’s hat in one hand and his hand in the other, and together they walked down hallways lined with paintings and statues and other bits of cultural heritage the Dai family had collected over the years. When they came to the door to Zan’s room, Quy paused. Roulan stopped a step later and looked at him. “Quy?”

He didn’t let go of her hand as he gently pushed the door open, and together they poked their heads inside. Zan’s room was tidy as ever, save for the uniform she’d left thrown over a chair and the pile of books and scrolls that’d been placed on the floor - leaving plenty of room for the bouquets of jade flowers strewn over her desk. The moonlight illuminated their daughter where she lay on her side in her bed, fast asleep, a strand of hair fallen over her mouth and floating back and forth as she breathed. Roulan giggled quietly, and Quy smiled as he stepped into the room and pushed the errant lock from her face, tucking it back behind her ear. They stood there a few moments more, watching Zan sleep, her breaths even and her face peaceful.

She was, Quy reflected, about the same age as the Firebender back at the lake.

Then Roulan was gently tugging him out of the room and closing the door behind them. She shot a smile at Quy, though she looked a little bemused as to what that had been about. Their children were full grown - Zan was their youngest - and they certainly didn’t need to be checked on or tucked in.

Quy didn’t care. There was a brainwashed Firebender under Lake Laogai. He wanted to see his children.

He went for the next door.

“Quy!” Roulan hissed as he opened it. “Quy, what are you doing, they are  _ married _ , we should know better than to go into a married couple’s room - !”

Quy smirked. “If we see anything we shouldn’t, we can consider it payback for that time you and I and Solada scarred my father for life.”

Roulan snorted, and then Quy was stepping into Sunan and Wenli’s room.

There was, thankfully, nothing embarrassing or private going on. Quy’s firstborn son and daughter-in-law were sound asleep, fully clothed and tucked under the blankets. Sunan was curled on his side, and Wenli was spooned around him. Their hair was unbound and starting to intermingle, and Quy smiled at the sight.

Roulan came in just behind Quy, and also grinned when she saw them. “That’s going to be a pain to untangle in the morning.”

Quy chuckled in agreement, and they exchanged a knowing look. They had personal experience with  _ that _ problem. Roulan had practically cursed him and Solada out one morning, when she’d been running late to a meeting because their hair was hopelessly knotted together, and Solada hadn’t been able to stop laughing and Quy had broken a comb trying to get the worst of the tangles out and Roulan had griped and grumbled and  _ so help me Quy I will defy Avatar Kyoshi’s dress code and chop the whole mess off, see if I don’t! _

She hadn’t. They’d all started wearing braids to bed, though. Sunan and Wenli hadn’t quite reached that point yet. Quy privately suspected they  _ liked _ having an excuse to be stuck together in the mornings.

Roulan stepped forward and rearranged the blankets so that Sunan’s nose and mouth were free to breathe fresher air. Then she stroked his hair a few times, and Quy’s heart clenched a bit at the sight. Sunan was Solada’s son by birth, but Roulan was also his mother in every other way that counted.

They watched their son and daughter-in-law breathe a few more times, and then Roulan was pulling Quy from this room, too. “C’mon,” she murmured, “ _ bed _ .”

They closed the door and continued down the hallway. Quy was fully prepared to pass by Kun’s room - it would be empty, and who knew when Kun would get home - but just as they walked by it there was a sudden clatter from inside, followed by a brief, soft exclamation of “What the - aw,  _ schist _ .” There was more, quieter clattering.

Quy and Roulan stopped mid-step and exchanged looks, and then Roulan knocked on the door. “Kun?” she called quietly. “Kun, is that you?”

A moment of sudden silence, and then “ _ Yes _ !” came the answer. “Yes, it’s me, don’t come in, just a sec - ”

“What is he doing?” Roulan grumbled as their son made even more suspicious noises. “Hiding a body?”

“No, that’s what the lake is for,” Quy said mildly. Roulan gave him an unamused look. “My question is, how did he get in without us seeing him?”

“Oh my spirits, the  _ windows _ !” Roulan gasped, and she wrenched the door open.

“Mom,  _ no _ \- ” Kun started, and then it was too late. Quy and Roulan stared at their middle child, halfway through a busted paper window, and Kun blinked back at them from his precarious position. The top half of his body had made it all the way through the window frame before getting stuck mid-torso. Quy wondered how his son had even managed that. He’d come down from the roof, surely, but to get his head and arms in like that he must’ve been using his feet as an anchor to swing in from the eaves.

There was an awkward moment of silence, and then Kun straightened, drew up as much dignity as he could in his position, and put on his best I-know-all-and-I’m-above-this Investigations agent air. “Good evening,” he said, peering at them from under his Dai Li hat. “Would you mind explaining why my window was closed?”

Roulan crossed her arms. “Young man,” she said sternly, “I just  _ replaced _ that window! Today!”

“Ah,” said Kun, looking at the ruined window around him. “I see. Yes. Sorry about that. Would that have anything to do with why it was  _ closed _ ?”

“Because I closed it,” Roulan said.

Kun groaned. “Mom, you know I like to keep my windows open. So that things like  _ this _ don’t happen.” He thrashed a bit, trying to free himself from the wood and paper.

“Kun, it’s spring,” Roulan said. “There are bugs. The windows should stay  _ closed _ .” She sighed at the ripped paper. “Of course, it’s a moot point now…”

“Yes, well,” Kun said, “this wouldn’t have happened had the window been left open, as I’d expected it to be. Because I left it like that. Because I occasionally swing down from the roof straight into my room through the window, which I never keep closed.”

“Why are you coming in through the window, anyway?” Roulan sighed. “Can’t you use the front door like a normal person?”

“I didn’t want to wake anyone up!” Kun said. He attempted to pull himself farther into the room, but his uniform appeared to be stuck on the wooden splinters.

“Do you need help?” Quy asked, trying not to laugh.

Kun attempted one last heave before giving up. Sighing, he held out his hands, the stone gloving them sliding back up his arms under his sleeves. “Yes, please?”

Quy chuckled. He and Roulan each grabbed one of his hands, and together they pulled their son the rest of the way into his room, taking care to unhook his robes whenever the cloth snagged on the broken wood. Kun slid the last few inches in, and with a yelp he and his parents wound up together on the floor.

“Well,” Roulan sighed, looking up at the broken window. “I’ll just have to replace that  _ again _ .”

“Sorry, Mom,” Kun grunted from where he was practically lying in Quy’s lap. He started to get up, and paused when he realized his father’s arms were wrapped around him in a firm hug. “Uh, Dad?”

“It’s good to see you,” Quy said quietly.

Kun paused before hugging back. “It’s good to see you too,” he said. Quy smiled and let go, and Kun turned to Roulan. “Mom!” he beamed. “I love you!”

She smirked. “Which is why you’ll be helping me replace that window.”

Kun sighed. “Of course.”

She reached over and took his hat off. “Now go to sleep,” she ordered, placing a kiss on his forehead. “We need to wake up bright and early tomorrow.”

“More like dark and early,” Kun huffed. “I might as well just stay up. Normally I’m going to bed when I’m gonna be waking up, though my sleeping schedule’s kinda shot at the moment - ”

“How long have you  _ been _ awake?” Roulan asked, frowning.

Kun gave her a sheepish look. “Uh...classified?”

“We don’t classify agents’ sleep schedules,” Quy hummed.

Kun shot his father a betrayed look. “It hasn’t been more than twenty hours, promise.”

“ _ Sleep _ ,” Roulan ordered, pointing imperiously at her son’s bed.

“On it,” Kun sighed, getting up. Quy and Roulan followed suit, Roulan placing Kun’s hat on his dresser and picking Quy’s up from where she’d dropped it on the floor. “Good night,” he added as he started to peel off the first layer of his uniform.

“Good night,” Quy said, and he and Roulan left the room.

“Well,” Roulan said once the door was closed. “Everyone’s officially home. Can  _ we _ go to sleep now?”

Quy smiled at her. “Yes.”

They finally retreated to the master suite at the back of the house. Quy was disrobing even before they’d made it through the antechamber to their bedroom, more than ready to change into his sleepwear and go to bed. He didn’t even bother undoing the top layer all the way - he just yanked it over his head as he walked through the bedroom door, and emerged to find his wife heading toward the candles they kept on the nightstand.

“No,” he said quickly. “Don’t.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, hand hovering over the spark rocks. The entire room was lit up with crystals, but fire gave off better light.

He didn’t want to see fire right now. “We’re going to be in bed in five minutes,” he said, tossing his shed clothes in the laundry bin and starting on the second layer. “Don’t bother.”

Roulan nodded and left the candles, instead carrying his hat to the vanity. She took a moment to examine it, bent a few bits off dirt off the rim, and then placed it to rest on the hat stand, right beside her own. Then she sat down and began brushing her hair, and Quy watched her as he changed into his nightclothes. Roulan’s hair was so long it fell past her seat, and she carefully brushed each lock from root to tip, careful not to snag her comb on her dressing gown. It was a comfy old thing, spring green and embroidered with badgermoles and geometric patterns in painstaking detail - a decades-old birthday present from Solada.

The crystal-light illuminated Roulan with a soft glow, and everything about her in this moment was soft and gentle. Quy wished Solada was there to see it with him.

When he was dressed, he came up behind her, plucked the brush from her fingers and started combing her hair himself. Roulan’s hair was as long as his - they’d grown up and grown their hair out together. Hers, however, was far less gray. It was genetic, but Quy liked to joke it was because she hadn’t spent fourteen years dealing with mountains of paperwork.

It was just a joke. She  _ had _ spent fourteen years dealing with Long Feng’s reimagining of the Dai Li. Quy was fairly certain that was far more stressful.

He braided a long queue down her back before kissing the crown of her head and leaning over her, tucking her head beneath his chin and embracing her from behind. Roulan smiled at him in the mirror, and then she frowned at something. “Quy,” she said, looking down at the arms encircling her, “you forgot to take your gloves off.”

Quy blinked and looked down at his arms. Sure enough, they were still encased in stone. “...It’s been a long day,” he said tiredly.

Roulan giggled and placed her hands over his arms, running them from his elbows to his wrists before lifting up and bending the rocks away from his skin. She spun them in an elegant circle before laying them to rest by his hat stand. “Come on,” she said, standing up. She picked up the hairbrush and used it to point at the seat. “Let me take care of you, and then we can go to bed.”

He sat down, and she quickly undid his braid, untangling it with the ease that came with decades of practice. They’d been Dai Li partners long before they’d been husband and wife. Hair care was something they’d been doing for each other for most of their lives. She ran the brush through Quy’s gray locks, brushing the wisps and tangles into submission.

“We’re going to your parents’ tomorrow, right?” Quy asked, watching her work in the mirror. She helped him honor his ancestors, and he helped her honor hers.

“For lunch,” Roulan confirmed, separating his hair into three sections and re-braiding it. “And we need to stop by the temple for Solada’s family. Ratana and Klahan will join us for that, and I think your mother and cousins are going to the Lower Ring to see their people. But we’re all coming back here for dinner. The whole family, all together - me, you, the kids, your mother, Ratana and Klahan and Niran, Tien and Hoang…”

“That’ll be nice,” Quy said.

“Kun’s not allowed to leave,” Roulan warned. “I don’t care if Yong himself shows up with a secret mission; it’s Qingming. He needs to be  _ home _ .”

Quy chuckled. “We’ll tie him to his seat if we have to.”

Roulan chuckled. “Sometimes I’m half-tempted to ask Shirong to recondition him to  _ not _ go gallivanting off on a moment’s notice.”

“Not going to happen,” Quy snorted. “Long Feng wouldn’t want to compromise any of our agents’ minds with reconditioning.” Then he realized what he’d just said and reflected on the irony. There was a brainwashed Firebender in a Dai Li uniform under Lake Laogai. If that wasn’t compromisation, he didn’t know what was.

They lapsed into silence as Roulan finished with the braid, and Quy ruminated on the Firebender. It was the weekend, and he had two whole days before he had to actually  _ deal _ with the man, and he wasn’t sure if he was relieved or worried about that. On the one hand, he had two days of freedom from Shirong’s unnerving little project. On the other hand, he had two days of an unsupervised Firebender under the lake.

Well, not entirely unsupervised. Lake duty fell to Shirong this weekend, so he’d be there at least.

If a rebound was going to happen, Quy hoped it’d happen in the next forty-eight hours. Then he wouldn’t need to deal with it at all, and Shirong could clean up his own mess.

At least he  _ probably _ wouldn’t return to work to find the lake going up in flames on Yang-Earthday. It was a stone cave system under a ton of water. Kind of hard to burn  _ that _ down.

And Shirong was keeping an eye on him. If there were any issues, Shirong would be able to handle it. Though of course, that begged the question as to what Shirong was doing tomorrow. It was Qingming, and Quy  _ knew _ Shirong had graves to sweep. There was no one else who would.

Well, if Shirong was willing to sacrifice filial piety for the sake of a Firebender, that was on him.

Roulan tied off the end of Quy’s braid. “Alright,” she said. “Bed.” It was a large bed - large enough to comfortably fit three people, though for years now it’d only been the two of them. Quy laid down on his back, and Roulan curled on her side beside him and pulled the covers up around them. “Sleep well,” she said. “Busy day tomorrow.”

“Mm-hm.” Did the Firebender know it was Qingming, anyway? What about  _ his _ family? Did Quy need to worry about this whole experimental reconditioning mess upsetting a load of Fire Nation ancestors? Could angry Fire Nation ghosts even reach Ba Sing Se? Was that a valid concern, or was he just thinking crazy now? What about the Firebender’s father, did he even know his son was (as good as) dead yet? Was he going to honor the young man tomorrow?

Did the Fire Nation even  _ care _ about Qingming?

“Do they celebrate Qingming in the Fire Nation?” Quy asked quietly.

Roulan was silent for a moment, quietly going through all her mental files on anthropology. Quy was probably making her think back all the way to their university days. “Yes,” she said at length. “They do. Think they have a few different traditions, though; I can’t remember. Something involving skulls.”

“That sounds barbaric,” Quy said.

“Might’ve been a Sun Warrior thing,” Roulan murmured against his shoulder. “Not modern. Why do you ask?”

Quy shrugged. “Just curious.”

“Mm,” Roulan hummed. “Go to sleep, love. We have a busy morning. There’s a lot of ancestors who we need to make sure get tile roofs in the afterlife tomorrow.” She raised a hand, and with a flick of her fingers and a twist of her wrist, all the crystals were suddenly covered with stone from the walls. The room was plunged into darkness, save for the moonbeams shining through the window. “Goodnight, Quy,” she said, already drifting to sleep.

“Goodnight,” Quy said quietly, staring up at the dark ceiling.


	2. In Which Graves are Swept

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, yay, AO3's back up! Time to update this!
> 
> Right, so, remember the warnings I posted in the first chapter? Those are definitely applicable in this chapter too, especially the last four, so let's go over them again:  
> -Mentions of brainwashing  
> -Allusions to Ba Sing Se being kinda messed up  
> -Mentions of past war crimes and genocide  
> -Mentions of past (mass) rape  
> -A character born out of rape  
> -A character who sees suicide as a viable option should everything go horribly wrong
> 
> (Also, since when does this site disallow copy/pasting out of stories? On the one hand, okay, I can see their point, harder to plagiarize, on the other hand, I didn't know it was that big an issue, wow this is annoying cuz I used to like copying/pasting favorite lines when I left reviews or when I needed references from my work, and it won't stop anyone who actually really wants to do it cuz all I had to do was change the www to a m in the web address and boom, we have copy/paste ignition again. FF dot Net, you are ridiculous.)
> 
> Many, many, many thanks to Stingrae for editing, as always, and to Silver for providing me with and clarifying the cultural side of things.
> 
> As a note, while the Avatarverse and Ba Sing Se in particular is very obviously based in Chinese and other Southeast Asian cultures, not all of my headcanons are going to match up with those cultures, partly because I am honestly not intimately familiar with said cultures so I'm totally gonna miss some stuff and make mistakes, and partly cuz sometimes those cultures' beliefs just don't mesh with the Avatarverse. Like, 4 is an unlucky number in China, and red is an auspicious color. Given that the Avatarverse revolves around the four elements, I highly doubt 4 is an unlucky number, and given that the Fire Nation has been trying to take over the world for the last century, I highly doubt the Earth Kingdom would see red as auspicious. That sort of thing.
> 
> Anyway, storytime! Enjoy!

Breakfast was dark and early the next morning. Quy found himself in the kitchen well before the sun came up.

"Do you need any help?" he asked, watching his sister- and brother-in-law dash about.

"Absolutely not," Ratana said, pointing at the table. "You sit yourself down and stay out of the way." Beside her, Klahan smirked and nodded in assent. The kitchen had been their domain for years, and as much as they enjoyed cooking with family, they tended to hog the space when they were in a rush.

Knowing that the most helpful thing he could do was stay out of their way, Quy did as he was told and sat down on the other side of the kitchen. They were forgoing the formal dining room this morning in favor of the low table in the kitchen so they could eat fast and head down to the graves immediately after. His mother sat on the cushion beside him, watching Roulan prepare the tea.

"Good morning, Mother," Quy said, pressing a kiss to her cheek.

Phuong smiled at him. "Good morning, dear," she said, patting his hand. "I didn't see you at all yesterday. Was work hard?"

"Yes, it...the meeting ran late," Quy said, abruptly reminded of the brainwashed Firebender under the lake. He'd so hoped he wouldn't have to think about that today, too. "Had some things to take care of," he added, and he would have chided himself for such a vague answer had it not been for the fact that he worked in the Dai Li and thus his family was all-too-used to vague answers when it came to questions about his work.

"Hm," Phuong said, accepting a cup of tea from Roulan. "Thank you, dear," she said, taking a sip.

Ratana and Klahan were making short work of breakfast, helped along by the fact that most of the food had been prepared beforehand. Klahan was preparing cold jook and pickled vegetables while Ratana laid out the century eggs she'd prepared weeks ago and dug up this morning. "Where are the kids?" she asked, brushing dirt off of one of the eggs' shells.

"Zan's up," Roulan said, pouring tea into more cups. She handed one of them off to Quy. "Sunan and Wenli were awake when I knocked on their door. And if Kun's not up now, he will be soon. Where's Niran?"

"Already outside," Ratana said. "Getting a head start on the willow branches. Hoang's with him."

Quy ran down the list of family members and found one missing. "Where's Tien?"

"Where do you think?" Phuong asked quietly. "Let her be for now, she'll come when she's ready."

Quy nodded somberly and tried not to dwell on his cousin. Tien was the daughter of his Uncle Chien, his mother's younger brother, and like everyone else from Nanyue, Qingming was always hard on her.

Nowhere near as hard as the entire season of summer, though.

He thought of the Firebender again, and thanked all the spirits that the story behind the boy's existence was extremely classified. He would never have to explain _that_ situation to his mother and cousin. _By the way, one of the Firebenders who served directly under the man who destroyed our homeland and murdered our people and tried to break through the Outer Wall to do it again is going to be working under me. Don't worry, we brainwashed him._ No, that would not go over well. Not at all.

There were footsteps in the hallway, and Kun, of all people, stumbled into the kitchen. He was already dressed in a crisp white hanfu, and he waved at his parents and aunt and uncle before collapsing on a cushion at the table, right beside Phuong. "Mornin', Grandma."

"Good morning, Kun," Phuong beamed, looking pleasantly surprised. Quy was as well. Kun, along with having irregular hours in the Dai Li, was very much a night owlcat, and definitely _not_ an early bird. "How are you?"

"Awake," Kun said, eyeing the teacups. "Please tell me that's the energizing stuff."

Phuong sniffed. "You think I'd bother with anything else? Here," she said, taking a filled cup and pressing it to Kun's hands. He gulped the drink down eagerly.

"I'm glad you're awake," Roulan said to her son. "I was thinking Zan would have to drag you out of bed or something."

Kun shuddered. "Yeah, I try to _avoid_ that. Is breakfast gonna be ready soon? I'm starving."

"About ten minutes," Klahan said. When Kun groaned he grinned and added, "Hang in there, kid."

"Did you even eat dinner?" Roulan asked her son.

Kun answered by loudly slurping his tea. Roulan gave him an unimpressed frown, but before she could properly scold him there came the sound of footsteps from down the hallway. Kun was saved from his mother's imminent lecture by his siblings and sister-in-law coming through the kitchen door. They were dressed in white, their robes embroidered with yellow chrysanthemums and willow branches. Sunan's hair was done back in its regular braid, but Zan and Wenli had forgone the traditional Dai Li hairstyle in favor of more elaborate updos.

"Kun!" Zan beamed. "You're awake already!"

"Yeah, already," Kun said. "What took you three so long?"

Sunan and Wenli looked mildly embarrassed. "We kind of had to disentangle our hair," Sunan said.

"It was a mess," Wenli added.

Quy and Roulan exchanged smirks.

Kun waggled his eyebrows. "Ooooh, fun night?" Phuong smacked the back of his head. "Ow! Grandma!"

She smiled at him. "Don't tease your brother," she ordered, sipping her tea.

"Fine, sorry," Kun grumbled, rubbing his head.

"Oh, it's fine, Grandma," Sunan said. "One of these days he's gonna bring some guy home, and Wenli and I will be _more_ than ready to return the favor."

" _So_ ready," Wenli said, grinning at her brother-in-law.

"Why do you think I've _never_ brought anyone home?" Kun snorted. "Alright, so you two were all tied up, got it. Zan, what's your excuse?"

"I had to help them disentangle their hair," she said, hooking a thumb at Sunan and Wenli. "But now that we're all here, come on! Let's go! Willow trees!"

"Can it wait until _after_ breakfast?" Kun asked, shooting a longing look toward the jook.

"No," Zan said, grabbing his arm. "We wait, we get restless ghosts wandering in. Do you want restless ghosts to interrupt breakfast?"

"It might be amusing if it was Grandpa," Kun said.

Zan rolled her eyes. "Niran and Hoang are waiting for us. Come _on_ , Kun, you have to help us with the willow branches. It's _tradition_ _!_ "

"Fine, fine - just a second!" He gulped down the last of his tea before letting his sister drag him out of the kitchen. Sunan and Wenli watched them go with amused looks and started to follow after, but Ratana stopped them with a question.

"Sunan, how are you feeling this morning? Do you need any poppy tea?"

"Nah," Sunan said, shooting her a reassuring smile. "I'm feeling alright, Aunt Ratana, thanks."

Ratana smiled back. "Alright," she said. "Good. Go take care of those willows, then."

Sunan and Wenli walked out of the kitchen towards the courtyard together, arm in arm.

Ratana opened a cabinet and withdrew a box, checking its contents. "That does remind me, though," she said. "We're running a little low on poppy pods." She looked at Quy, and he nodded.

"Right," he said. "I'll order more." It would be a hassle - it always was. Poppies were a strictly controlled substance in Ba Sing Se - the city couldn't afford the masses getting addicted, or worse, using farmland that was needed for _food_ to grow a plant that was only used as a drug. Opiates were restricted to medicinal locations where they were actually of use - and not even all healers were allowed to have them. Lower Ring clinics _definitely_ weren't licensed to have any, and even some Middle Ring clinics didn't. And the drug _certainly_ wasn't regularly allowed to be kept in citizens' private homes.

Quy's family, of course, was the exception. Being a Dai Li Director had its perks - even if those perks came wrapped up in a lot of paperwork and red tape.

Quy didn't mind, so long as it meant his son didn't have to live in pain.

When the plates were set and another pot of tea was made and Klahan announced that breakfast was ready to be served, Quy headed out into the courtyard to call the kids in. He found Sunan and Wenli sitting under the willow by the koi pond, Sunan very intently weaving a long willow branch into a crown around his wife's head to match the one on his own. Wenli herself was weaving another bunch of willow branches into a broomhead, using a bit of earthbending to fasten them in place with stone. A few more finished brooms lay beside her, each created by a different person, judging by the designs. Quy recognized Zan's signature cloud pattern and Kun's efficient lines and the geometric Nanyuese patterns Hoang liked to incorporate into her work. Niran's broom, likewise, had patterns from Sai An, and Sunan had written a poem down the handle of his own - Quy recognized the lines of Du Mu's _Qingming Festival_. Wenli's broom was getting decorated with chrysanthemums that she grew right out of the stone.

Other families, Quy knew, had to manually bind the brooms together with string. He was glad they had so many benders in his family. It was more fun this way.

"Breakfast is almost ready," he said as he approached. "Where are your - "

There was a yelp, and Niran fell out of the tree.

" - cousins," Quy finished with a sigh, already reaching down to help his nephew up. "Niran, are you alright?"

"Ugh," Niran said, brushing off his robes. A patch of dirt had stubbornly ingrained itself into white the fabric, and he frowned at it before bending it right out of the fibers. "Sorry, lost my footing."

"Thank the spirits you don't lose your footing when we're working," Sunan snorted, wreathing the willow branch around Wenli's head one last time. "I'd be ashamed to call you my partner."

"Hey, stone walls I can handle. Tree bark? Not so much."

There was a snicker from above, the sound of snapping wood, and a few more willow branches slithered to the ground before Hoang hopped out of the tree. "I think that'll be enough branches," she said as she bent over, scooping up the long vines she'd cut down. "Good morning, Uncle Quy."

Quy smiled at her. "Good morning, Hoang," he began, and then he paused and looked at her again. Was there something...different about her this morning? He wasn't sure; it was still a little dim, the sun was only just coming up. Something about her, though, made him uneasy, and he watched her gather up the willow branches and stand up, unsure what -

The rising sun lit on Hoang's face as she straightened, and for a split-second the rich, golden light of the morning illuminated the sharpness of her jaw and set her eyes ablaze. Quy felt like the breath had been punched out of him. He thought of the Firebender back under the lake, and he firmly pushed the thought from his head. This wasn't a day to be thinking about Firebenders; this was a day to think about family.

And Hoang was family. She was Quy's little cousin, who he'd helped raise as practically a second daughter, and she was Phuong's great-niece, and she was Tien's daughter. She was family, and she was _theirs_ , even though whoever her father was -

Even though whoever her father was didn't bear thinking about.

Quy thought of the Firebender again, cautiously stole another glance at Hoang, and tried not to think about the similarities.

Hoang, at least, didn't seem to notice the sudden scrutiny. "I'm gonna go help Zan and Kun finish with the gate," she said, heading toward the far wall of the courtyard where the gate led out into the street.

"I'll come with you," Quy said, walking with her. She smiled up at him and handed him a few willow branches.

They found Kun and Zan right outside the gate, carefully placing branches over the entrance and binding them in place with stone decorations. Chrysanthemums, Quy noted approvingly, though their style was different from Wenli's. Granted, Kun's flowers barely had any style at all.

"You really _suck_ at sculpture," Zan said, peering at the loopy blob Kun had made on the gate's bottom left frame. She touched the stone, and better-defined petals formed under her fingers.

"Well, jeez, sorry I decided to be a special agent instead of an art history major!" Kun said from where he was perched on top of the gate, arranging willow vines.

"Oh, you're _special_ alright," Zan snorted, fixing another one of his flowers. Kun stuck his tongue out at her.

"If you two are finished," Quy said, helping Hoang put up the last of the branches, "breakfast is ready."

"Oh thank _Kyoshi_ ," Kun said, immediately hopping off the gate. He dodged Zan's hands and dashed into the courtyard towards the kitchen.

"He is just _impossible_ ," Zan huffed. She fixed one last flower and went in after him.

Quy and Hoang exchanged glances and chuckled. Hoang finished up with the last willow branch, and Quy took a moment to look up and down the street. Spring was in full bloom. Unlike most of the city, the Upper Ring was graced with nature and space - there were large parks and wide open fields and trees and bushes and flowers everywhere, and none of the buildings were cramped together. Here on Quy's street, the apricot trees were overflowing with pinkish-white flowers and the sunlight filtering through the mist gave the entire world an iridescent glow. Every gate lining the road was decorated with willow branches.

Far down the street, at the gate to the house Roulan had grown up in, he could make out figures putting up their own willow branches. Roulan's uncle and brother and cousins, Quy thought. One of them caught sight of him and Hoang and waved. Quy and Hoang waved back.

"It's a beautiful morning," Hoang said.

"It is," he agreed. "Ready for breakfast?"

"Yes," she said, and they walked back through the gate and headed towards the kitchen. "Is Mama there?"

Quy paused halfway through the courtyard and glanced toward the hallway that led toward the second courtyard, farther back in the house. "No," he said slowly, "she isn't."

Hoang's face fell. "I bet she doesn't even want to eat," she said. "She barely had anything last night…" She turned towards the hallway that led further back into the house, but Quy grabbed her hand.

"I'll get her," he offered. "You go eat."

Hoang hesitated. "But…"

"Hey," Quy said, lightly tapping her nose. "You helped your mother yesterday, and I'm sure you'll be a huge help to her today as well. But I'd like to see my cousin too, you know."

It was an out, and she took it with a slight smile. "Alright," she said. "Good point. I think it'd be good for her to see you, too. We were wondering where you were last night."

Quy resolutely _did not think_ about the Firebender, or about Nanyue, or about the yellow-green shade of Hoang's eyes. "I was busy," he said.

"Yeah," she said. "We figured." Her stomach growled suddenly.

Quy smiled and shook his head. "You go eat. I'll get your mother."

Hoang nodded and headed toward the kitchen, where Quy could hear the rest of the family talking and dishware clattering. Quy headed toward the back of the house, where the family's private quarters were located. He cut through the second courtyard and made straight for the section that'd been cordoned off for his Trung cousins to live in. The house was so large that it'd been split up and sectioned off over the years as the family expanded. Quy and Roulan had the master suite, of course, but Ratana and Klahan and Niran had their own apartments, and so did Tien and Hoang.

He found his cousin right where he expected her, by the entrance to her rooms, sitting before the shrine they'd set up specifically for the Trungs. Quy looked at the slab of stone before her and noticed she must not have had the time to tend to it yet - yesterday's wilted flowers were still scattered around the tablets etched with the names of their dead family members. In her hands Tien held a small statue of yellow-brown jade, molded in the shape of a mouse-deer, scratched and nicked and missing half an ear and a chunk of its left foreleg. Its mate - still perched on the shrine, by a portrait of six smiling people - was whole and flawless.

Tien sat straight and still, eyes closed. Her only movement came from the subtle rise and fall of her chest as she slowly breathed. Quy stepped up to her side, taking care to make sure that she heard him coming. "Tien?" he asked gently. "Breakfast is ready."

Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked at the portrait in the center of the shrine. "Thank you, Quy," she said quietly, "but I'm not really hungry."

He'd expected that, just as Hoang had. Tien always lost her appetite this time of year. "Tea, then?" he needled. When she didn't answer, he added, "Mother and Hoang will want you to have _something_."

Tien sighed. "Alright," she said, getting up and tucking the little stone mouse-deer into her pocket. "Tea."

They walked toward the kitchen together in silence. Quy kept glancing at his cousin. Tien was wearing more white than she usually did, and her long black hair hung unbound down her back. She looked tired and her eyes were distant, but she stood straight and walked with a steady pace. It was, Quy supposed, about as alright as he could expect her to be right now.

It was better than she _had_ been, at least. A month ago, when the Dragon of the West had still been pounding away at the Outer Wall, Tien had been two steps away from an absolute wreck. Quy's reassurances that the Wall would hold hadn't mattered to her. Tien had escaped the Fire Nation before, and she'd known what they were capable of. She'd been very sure that they were all going to die, and she'd spent those six hundred days tense and on edge.

She'd been better since the Siege had broken, but now summer was nearly upon them. Tien didn't do well during the summer; few Nanyuese survivors did. Quy couldn't help but worry about her.

"I'm not made of glass, Quy," Tien said, when she caught him sneaking the hundredth glance at her.

"I know," he said, because it was true. His cousin was by no means fragile. She'd been in combat at an early age, and she'd escaped from the Fire Army when she was barely grown and survived the long trek to Ba Sing Se. Quy had seen some awful things during his time in the Dai Li, but he knew his cousin had lived through worse. She could handle many things.

That didn't mean she should _have_ to, though.

"I just worry about you," he added, because that was true too.

Tien snorted, and she reached to her neck and pulled out a chain she'd kept hidden under her collar. It was a very simple necklace - nothing more than a chain and a small vial that her fingers now absently fiddled with, and Quy felt his heart freeze at the sight of it.

Nearly two years ago, when he'd admitted the existence of the Siege to her, Tien had gone out to the apothecary and ordered a potent poison made from the upas tree and several venomous animals - the same stuff she'd tipped her arrows with when she'd been defending Nanyue from the Fire Nation. The same stuff her aunts had swallowed to avoid getting captured when it became clear that General Iroh's troops had them surrounded.

"You worry about the wrong things, Quy," Tien said.

"I thought you'd gotten rid of that!" he hissed. His mother and Hoang had stopped wearing their own vials after the Siege had broken. Tien had had enough poison made for the entire family, though only the Trungs had bothered to wear theirs on their person. Everyone else had accepted the odd gifts reluctantly and tucked them away in forgotten places. Quy had hidden his in the back cabinet of his home office. He'd refused to wear it, despite Tien's entreaties. He'd put his faith in the Walls.

His faith in the Walls had been shattered by thousands of barrels of blasting jelly and his cousin's terrified _I told you so_.

The Fire Nation had been pushed back, but those last few days of the Siege had been hard on them all.

Tien looked at the vial. "I find it comforting," she said quietly.

" _How_ do you find that comforting?" Quy demanded. _He_ found it disturbing, how ready his cousin was to die at a moment's notice.

"It's better than the alternative," Tien said, and it must have been the thousandth time she'd given him that answer. Quy knew better than to press the issue any further. There were haunted looks in the eyes of Nanyuese refugees, and Tien had come to Ba Sing Se with shorn hair and burn scars and a pregnancy she hadn't wanted, and there was an entire generation that was known for having yellow eyes.

Tien had had every right to be terrified by the Siege.

"It's over, Tien," Quy said gently. When the Siege had lifted, he'd made sure to tell her immediately. Six hundred days of stress and fear had lifted from her in minutes, and her relief in that moment had been a palpable, hysteric thing. When he'd told her General Iroh's son was dead, she'd dissolved into manic laughter. Quy had been worried she might actually go into shock. "They've withdrawn. We're safe. It's over."

She gave him a tired look and tucked the necklace back under her collar. "It'll never be over, Quy."

He let the subject drop.

They reached the kitchen, and Quy took his seat beside Roulan while Tien went to sit between Phuong and Hoang. Hoang immediately brightened and poured her mother a cup of tea, and Tien smiled at her daughter.

"Willow branches taken care of, then?" she asked.

Hoang nodded and pressed the teacup into her mother's hands. "The gate's covered in them."

"Yeah," Kun said. "No ghosts or wandering souls or dark spirits getting in here."

Tien gave a somber little nod and sipped her tea. Phuong placed a bowl of jook and vegetables in front of her - just a very small amount, in the hopes that it would be enough to entice Tien into picking at it - but she didn't seem to notice.

"Pity we don't have anything that'll repel annoying little sisters that well," Kun added. He idly flicked a bit of chopped onion from his bowl at Zan.

"Hey!" she snapped, flinging a shred of carrot back at him.

Kun looked like he was about to retaliate with a mushroom, but a pointed cough made him think twice. He and Zan looked across the table, and Quy turned to see his wife massaging her temples, eyes closed in irritation. "Will you two _please_ ," Roulan said, "eat your breakfast like _civilized people_?"

"Sorry Mom," they said, immediately turning their attention back to their food. Roulan dropped her hands with a sigh, and Quy shot her a smirk. There was a quiet snicker from farther down the table, and Quy glanced that way to see Tien smiling into her teacup. She sipped at her drink, but still hadn't touched any of her food.

Breakfast was quick and calm after that. Kun and Zan studiously ignored each other for the sake of peace and quiet. Sunan and Wenli freely ate off of each other's plates, swiping bits of food from each other while Kun rolled his eyes. Niran, the oldest of their generation, dutifully ignored all of his cousins' antics and pointedly complimented his parents' cooking. Tien had a few bites of jook at Phuong's insistence, but otherwise left her food untouched. She did drink her tea, though, and Hoang refilled the cup whenever it edged on empty.

Quy kept sneaking looks at Hoang, unable to help himself. The family had always focused on how much she looked like her mother, or her grandfather, or even her great-aunts or great-grandparents or any other Trungs who they had pictures or memories of to compare her to. She didn't look _exactly_ like any of them, of course. There were little things - the angles of her cheekbones, the point of her chin, the distinct profile of her nose - tiny discrepancies in the shape of her face that made something about her just look _off_ and added up into something none of them wanted to dwell on.

And then there were her eyes, of course - the most obvious of all her genetics. Tien's eyes were the color of a dark lime rind, but Hoang's were a violent, acidic shade of yellow-green that made it hard for some people to make eye contact with her.

It had become normal to them, though. Hoang was family, and while the circumstances of her birth were unfortunate, they loved her. She was, as far as anyone was concerned, fully Earth Kingdom, fully Nanyuese, fully a Trung, and her looks and the half of her lineage they knew nothing about didn't matter.

Now that Quy had actually _seen_ a full-blooded Firebender in the flesh, however...he kept doing double takes. Hoang hadn't changed, but he was noticing little things about her face that he now knew were Fire Nation traits. It was an awareness he could have happily done without.

Thanks to Shirong's brainwashing experiments and his own big mouth, Quy was going to have to look at a Firebender every single workday for the foreseeable future. He pushed the thought away as quick as it came. He did _not_ want to be thinking about the Firebender right now.

When everyone had finished eating, Ratana and Klahan cleaned up with the help of Niran, Roulan, and Quy. Zan ran to her room to get the jade flowers she'd made the night before, while Sunan, Wenli, and Kun went back out to the courtyard to retrieve the brooms and willow branches. Tien remained in her seat at the table, idly picking at her food. She had another mouthful of jook before pushing her bowl away towards the dishes Roulan was stacking up.

Roulan paused before she took it, looking at the unfinished food. Tien had barely eaten a third of her meal. "You're done, Tien?"

Tien drank the last of her tea. "I'm not very hungry," she said. On either side of her, Phuong's lips thinned and Hoang's shoulders slumped, resigned.

Roulan nodded and took the bowl away.

"More tea, Mama?" Hoang asked.

Tien smiled at her. "No, thank you," she said, standing. "I'm going to go get the flowers ready." She leaned over to place a kiss on the crown of her daughter's head before walking out of the room.

Hoang watched her go. "She _has_ been doing a lot better," she said to Quy, quietly. "Ever since you told us the Siege was over, she's been a lot less…"

"Stressed?" Quy suggested.

"And scared," Hoang said.

"That's good," Quy said. "Now if only she'd eat."

Hoang sighed. "Yeah."

"She'll eat later today," Phuong said, sounding quite sure of herself. "We'll be going down to Little Nanyue later for Thanh Minh. She won't be able to refuse our people when they offer her food."

Quy blinked. "That's a good plan," he said.

Phuong smirked. "I know." She held her hands out, and Quy and Hoang helped the old woman to her feet. "Well then. If we're done here in the kitchen, we'd better be heading down to the graves. Our family needs us."

 

* * *

 

In the caves far below the house, nestled amongst clusters of glowing crystals, thirteen generations of Dais rested in peace. The graves were slotted straight into the wall, headstones and small shrines marking each individual's resting place. There were many - the Dais had been living in their home for nearly four hundred years. Despite its age, however, the family cemetery was well cared-for by the living family members who visited often.

Today, however, was special.

Quy and Phuong led the family's descent into the caves, everyone else following behind them with offerings of some sort. Klahan and Ratana carried baskets of food, Niran and Sunan jars of paint, Wenli a box of incense. Kun and Zan both had baskets of flowers - Kun's cut fresh from the courtyard garden that morning, while Zan's had been painstakingly earthbent in jade the night before. Roulan carried a basket filled with papercrafts - mostly fake money, but also little paper houses and ostrich-horses and carriages and other such luxuries. Everyone carried their brooms.

Tien hung at the back of the group with Hoang, and Quy kept sneaking glances back at her. She didn't like it down here in the cemetery, he knew, and Ratana and Klahan still had their reservations about the place. It wasn't the graves themselves that put them on edge, but rather the reminder that the graves were _below_ the very ground they walked over every day on the surface. In Ba Sing Se, space was at a premium, and having your family buried beneath your house was simple practicality, but things were different outside the city.

Throughout the rest of the Earth Kingdom, where there was always more space, entire plots of land were set aside just for housing the dead. Graveyards were sacred, and to walk over graves was strictly forbidden, let alone building over them. But the city couldn't afford to waste so much space, so the dead were buried down in the catacombs. Only out in the Agrarian Zone were there surface-level cemeteries - and even those were sometimes worried over by city planning officials. Having dead people constantly under your feet was a fact of life in Ba Sing Se that left refugees disturbed, and Tien and Ratana and Klahan were no exception. The culture shock wasn't as bad as it had been when they'd been newly-arrived refugees fresh from the war, but old beliefs were hard to eradicate fully.

The Dais' first ancestors were buried at the start of the tunnel, with succeeding generations lining the wall farther and farther down. The family walked past hundreds of years of history until they reached the most recently deceased. Quy approached his father's grave, his mother beside him, and together they looked over the site. There was little work to be done here - the stone was intact and the carvings were still readable. The family visited often enough that maintenance was fairly regular. Shanyuan Dai had passed away of old age just a few years ago, and they'd all missed him terribly ever since.

They swept the grave with the willow brooms, brushing away what dust and gravel had accumulated. There were no weeds to worry about here underground, but there was some lichen, and Kun and Sunan scraped it from their grandfather's tombstone. Roulan and Zan brought out the paint and lovingly retouched the coloring on the carvings, and the gray stone was soon accented with cheerful greens and yellows. Quy left willow branches and white camellias by the headstone while his mother poured out a cup of the wine she'd brought down with them and placed it before her husband's shrine. Zan left one of the little jade flowers she'd crafted beside it. When the grave was cleaned up and decorated, Quy lit some incense.

They didn't pray yet. There were a dozen generations down here, and while the Dai family had always been firm on tradition, they were also efficient. All the ancestors would be prayed to at once, when all the graves had been cleaned up.

With Shanyuan taken care of, the family started dispersing towards the next grave, going to visit Solada in ones and twos. Ratana went first, approaching her sister's grave slowly, and Klahan followed after her. The rest of the family waited for a bit, and then Sunan left his grandfather's tombstone to go see his mother, Wenli and Niran in tow, and then Kun and Zan trailed after them.

Quy was left before his father's grave with his wife and mother and cousins. Tien stood by Shanyuan's tombstone, head bowed, eyes closed, lips moving slightly, and Quy realized she was murmuring a prayer. They stayed respectfully still and silent until she finished, and when her eyes fluttered open she gently tapped the tombstone.

"Dear Uncle," she sighed, her mouth curving in a brief smile. And then it was gone - she glanced around the cavern and wrapped her arms around herself, shuddering imperceptibly. Quy noticed, but his mother said something before he could.

"Thank you for coming to visit, dear," she said, patting Tien's arm. "He appreciates it."

Tien nodded.

"Now," Phuong continued, "I do believe he'd want you to go take care of _our_ family." It was an obvious out - Tien didn't like it down here and she wanted to get away from the graves - but it wasn't an empty excuse. The Trungs needed to be seen to, and there was no reason for Tien to be down here any longer - Shanyuan was the only person down here she'd known, and she wasn't related to any of the others. They didn't require her to honor them, and she had her own family to think of.

"Right," Tien said, already turning towards the staircase. "We'll see you up there."

"Mother and I will join you once we're done down here," Quy promised.

Tien nodded and walked away, Hoang beside her. Mother and daughter ascended the stairs together, Hoang taking Tien's hand as they went.

Now it was only Quy and Phuong and Roulan before Shanyuan's headstone. They were silent for a moment, and then Phuong spoke.

"I'm with her, you know," she said. "I don't care how long it's been going on or how efficient it is - walking over people's dead bodies every day is terribly disrespectful."

Roulan snorted, and Quy rolled his eyes. His mother had had nearly seventy years to get used to Ba Sing Se's cemetery system. She was no longer as creeped out by it as she'd been decades ago, but she did like to remind them of how wrong it was.

"Of course, your father always assured me it was perfectly alright, so who am I to complain? Apparently he's fine with me walking all over his grave."

"He was fine with you walking all over him in life, too," Quy quipped, and his mother laughed and lightly smacked his shoulder.

"Yes, he was." Phuong held a slender, wrinkled hand against her husband's name, a sad smile on her face. "I miss him so," she sighed. "I miss his affection attacks and his history rambles and his stupid jokes and the way I had to drag him out of bed every morning if he was ever going to get anything done."

Roulan snickered. "Kun takes after him in that regard."

Phuong smirked at her. "Yes, yes he does." She traced her finger over the words on the stone. "He was a good husband and a great father and grandfather...and he was my best friend. I miss him."

Quy placed his hand over his mother's, pressing both their hands over the inscription. "I know," he said quietly, and his eyes slid to the side, to where Sunan was already taking care of the next grave.

Phuong was silent and still for a moment, gazing down at her husband's headstone. Then she nodded and turned her hand over so that she held Quy's. "Come on, then." She looked over to where Sunan was busy before his mother's grave with the rest of the family. "Let's go visit Solada."

Quy gave a tight nod. His mother wasn't the only person here who'd lost a spouse. He let go of Phuong's hand and took Roulan's instead, and together they approached Solada's grave.

Sunan was gently scraping away at some lichen that'd grown over his mother's headstone while Niran repaired a bit of erosion on the other side. Kun and Zan were sweeping, and Wenli stood by, ready with the paint. Klahan was preparing the willow branches, and Ratana held a small bowl filled with carrots and cucumbers she'd carved into flowers. Quy came to her side, Roulan with him, and she looked up as they approached.

"Oh," Roulan said, looking at the vegetables. "She would've loved those."

"Wasn't that the only way you could get her to eat vegetables as a kid?" Sunan asked his aunt, picking off the last of the lichen. Wenli held the paint out to him, and he selected the yellow and started filling in in the carvings of his mother's name.

Ratana smiled at him. "Yes. She was such a picky eater. When she grew up I thought I wouldn't have to bother making her food pretty anymore, but she always pestered me into it and I always gave in." It was a story Ratana had told of her sister a thousand times, but Solada's memory lived on a little longer with each retelling. "You take after her, in that respect."

Sunan gave her a cheeky grin. "What can I say? Mom was right - vegetables taste better when they're pretty."

Niran finished sweeping and sat down beside Sunan, taking another jar of paint and tracing Sai-Anese designs around his aunt's headstone. Ratana and Klahan smiled as the familiar geometric patterns took shape. Neither Niran nor Sunan had ever been to Sai An, but as Dai Li agents and cultural protectors they'd made a point of learning as much as they could about their ancestral homeland's art.

While the boys worked, Roulan stepped away from Quy towards the wall of the cave. The crystals grew thick here, and Roulan carefully began plucking them from the stone. She floated them one by one toward Quy, who gathered them together in little bunches. By the time Sunan and Niran were done with the paint, Quy and Roulan had armfuls of crystal bouquets. They set them all around the headstone - the top was crowned with the prisms, and more trailed down the sides, and the rest were ringed around the bottom. When Quy and Roulan stepped back, Solada's grave was illuminated with the iridescent crystals. They leaned into each other as Ratana and Klahan stepped forward to offer the food and flowers, and Quy took Roulan's hand in his, squeezing tightly. She squeezed back.

They'd both loved Solada. When they'd lost her, they'd lost a part of themselves.

Kun and Zan hung back a bit while the rest of the family took care of Solada - they weren't related to her by blood, and they'd been born after she'd passed away. Had things gone differently - had Solada been healthier, had they managed to find a waterbender who could help her - she would have been a second mother to them, just as Roulan had been to Sunan. Solada would have loved them, Quy knew - Kun's sense of humor would be even drier and more sarcastic had she been able to raise him, and she would have been delighted at Zan's passion for all things historic. As it was, Kun swept a bit of dust away from the grave of a woman he'd never known, Zan left one of her jade flowers resting on the gravestone, and Quy and Roulan were left with their might-have-beens.

When they were done with Solada's grave, it was decorated with trails of crystals that illuminated the bright paints and flowers and food, lovely and luminous but nowhere near as so as their wife had been in life. Quy lit a candle and set it beside the bowl of carved vegetables, and Roulan touched the characters that made up Solada's name.

"Miss you," she murmured, and Quy brushed her fingers in solidarity.

He looked down the cave at the long line of graves that still needed tending, and he knew they couldn't linger here much longer. They had a lot of ancestors to take care of - over a dozen generations, well over two dozen graves. Quy could never view these duties as a chore, however - they were, rather, a blessing, one that he could never take for granted.

Especially not with the Sai family here, before Solada's grave - the only grave they had to tend to. Ratana and Solada's father and brother had died when the Fire Nation had attacked their hometown. Klahan's family hadn't even made it out of their village. Ratana and Solada's mother had survived the Fire Nation, but not the journey to Ba Sing Se. Her body lay in a barely-marked grave, far from the city.

" _We know where she's buried,"_ Solada had told him once. " _We know exactly - she's by a crossroad on a hill overlooking the river Qu in Yi Province, a day's journey south from the Great Divide."_

Quy had recorded the location as thoroughly as if it'd been an archaeological dig site log.

" _If it's ever safe enough,"_ Roulan had said, " _we'll go get her."_

It'd never been safe enough.

It couldn't be helped. The Sais would go to a temple later, to pray to their ancestors and apologize for being unable to honor them properly. Quy and Roulan would join them, because although they'd never met Solada's parents, they still honored them as their in-laws.

Before they could worry about that, though, Quy needed to take care of his own family. The Sais would stay with Solada for now - they had no ties to anyone else down here - but Quy still had plenty of ancestors to go. Sunan and Kun and Zan were here because they were Dais by blood and these were their ancestors, and Phuong and Roulan and Wenli were here because they were Dais by marriage and these were the ancestors they'd adopted. He gazed down the long cavern, lined with generations of graves waiting to be honored. "Well then," he said. "Let's get to it."

His grandparents were next. Gao Ming and Jian Dai had been a Dai Li power couple back in their day. Before the war, they'd gallivanted all across the Earth Kingdom on expeditions. They might have continued to do so long after the war had broken out as well, regional instability be damned, had it not been for the fact that Quy's father had been born. His grandparents were daring, but not reckless. They'd given up travelling in favor of museum work and raising their son. Quy remembered them fondly - they were the only set of grandparents he'd had, since his mother's parents had stayed behind in Nanyue, and they'd doted on him completely. Their stories had been the best - tales of their adventures throughout the Earth Kingdom, from their archaeological field work around Omashu, to the time Jian had literally fallen into a forgotten city's ruins, to the journeys they'd had with their old Airbender friends. They'd passed on at a ripe old age when Kun was still a baby, just a few years before Zan had been born.

Next were Quy's great-grandparents Aiguo and Biming, whom he only vaguely remembered - they'd died before he'd turned ten. Aiguo had been a notable Dai Li agent, while Great-Grandmother Biming, a non-bender, had been a famous musician. Many of her compositions were still played at parties in the Earth Palace.

And now they moved on to family members whom none of the living had met, but who were all still remembered and honored. There was Great-Great-Grandfather Wenyang and his wife Shan, who'd published a series of books on the history of earthbending. After them came Great-Great-Great-Grandmother Zhaohui, who'd been famed for her artistic skills - her painted birds so realistic they looked as though they might fly off the page - and her husband Ningbi, whose poems had often adorned his wife's paintings. Several of their works still hung throughout the house. And on and on it went, one great- after another, direct ancestors in a direct line with the occasional aunt or uncle who'd never married or had children or moved out, most of them Dai Li agents, many of them known for great accomplishments, all of them worthy of their descendants' honor. The family cleaned and decorated and left offerings for every ancestor, all the way back to Quy's tenth-great-grandparents, Shufang and Jianguo, a pair of earthbenders who'd been personally hand-picked and trained by Avatar Kyoshi herself to become some of the first Dai Li, and who'd taken on Dai as their family name.

"But of course we have _more_ ancestors beyond them," Zan said as she laid down the last of her jade flowers. " _They_ had parents, after all. And so did they, and so on and so forth - "

"Yeah, but they aren't _here_ ," Kun huffed, shooting his sister an exasperated look. She smiled cheekily.

"Alright," Quy said, stopping his children before they could get going. "Everyone's taken care of now." He looked down the length of the cave at the adorned graves. "Time to do the rites."

They knelt down on the ground, and Quy led the family through the prayers. It was the usual fare - prayers for their ancestors to have a good afterlife, to be happy and comfortable, to accept their offerings and watch over the family - but this year, Quy interspersed the usual well-wishes with extra prayers of thanksgiving. The Siege had ended, after so many pleas had been sent up for protection. There was a lot to be thankful for.

Afterward, Roulan pulled up the basket full of paper objects and emptied it, piling its contents on the floor. "One last offering," she grinned. "Who's got spark rocks?"

The paper went up like a light, and the flames quickly consumed the little paper houses and carriages and ostrich-horses and fake money, carrying them to the afterlife for the ancestors to enjoy. It was an old tradition, one that Quy's family had done every year he could remember, but this year it gave him pause. He watched a paper house go brown around the edges before crumbling into ash, and for a moment he thought of the siege, and the breach in the wall, and how close the city had come to losing everything. He thought of the Firebender back at the lake, and wondered if the boy would have laughed while the city burned.

He shook himself from the thoughts and picked up a little paper kumquat that had escaped the inferno and threw it into the flames. This tradition was ancient, and he wasn't going to let the Fire Nation take it from him.

When the paper gifts had been reduced to an ashy spot on the floor that was quickly swept away and earthbent smooth, Quy looked at his family and smiled. "Let's get back upstairs," he said. "There's still a lot to do today."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Hope you guys like it. I was really happy to see people were still reading this, even though it's been so long, ahahaha. I suck. :P
> 
> Please leave a review if you're so inclined! And you can find me on tumblr at gilded-green or caelum-in-the-avatarverse!
> 
> So, now that we've met everyone, here's a list of the characters and their ages. Well, their approximate ages. Quy, Roulan, Phuong, Tien, and Hoang are the only ones I've worked out proper birthdays/horoscopes for. Everyone else, it's possible their birthdays haven't happened yet. :P
> 
> Phuong Trung - 86  
> Quy Dai - 60  
> Roulan Dai - 61 (next month)  
> Ratana and Klahan Sai - 63  
> Tien Trung - 39  
> Niran Sai - 32  
> Sunan Dai - 31  
> Wenli Dai - 27  
> Kun Dai - 26  
> Zan Dai - 23  
> Hoang Trung - 22
> 
> [Now with a family tree!](http://gilded-green.tumblr.com/post/154181399806)


	3. In Which Offerings And Prayers Are Given

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alrighty, here we go. Today's chapter features even more dead people! :D
> 
> Again, the warnings are:
> 
> -Mentions of brainwashing  
> -Allusions to Ba Sing Se being kinda messed up  
> -Mentions of past war crimes and genocide  
> -Mentions of past rape  
> -A character born out of rape  
> -A character who sees suicide as a viable option should everything go horribly wrong
> 
> I suppose I could also warn for Tien's general depression, survivor's guilt, and lack of appetite.
> 
> Sometimes I ask Stingrae "why are all of our OCs so sad" and she reminds me "century-long war that's caused untold suffering and disrupted the world's balance means no one gets to be happy".

Quy and his mother joined the Trungs in their quarters. Tien and Hoang were already tending to the family shrine - the wilted flowers had been cleared away, and Tien was replacing them with fresh ones that she carefully placed around the little tablets of stone bearing the names of their dead relatives. Hoang sat beside her mother, arranging small bowls of food and pieces of fruit on the altar. There were other, older gifts scattered over the shrine - things that lasted longer than flowers and food, that didn’t need to be replaced. Cut paper decorations and small statues of spirits. Crystals from the catacombs and other pretty stones. A jar of Nanyuese soil, collected by Phuong decades ago before she’d left her homeland. Bits of stone twisted into flowers. The first rock Hoang had ever bent. In the center of it all was an old portrait of seven smiling people.

There were no candles. The family had agreed long ago that fire was not an appropriate offering for people who’d died by it. But there was some incense, already lit, and Quy breathed in the heady scent as he approached.

Phuong went to Tien’s side, and Quy helped his mother lower herself to the ground. She smiled and patted his arm in thanks, and Quy circled around them to sit down beside Hoang. She shot him a quick smile before turning her attention back to the fruit she was placing around the family portrait.

Quy looked at the portrait. It was a simple piece, black ink on yellowed paper picturing seven smiling people - the Trungs, as they’d been before Phuong had left for Ba Sing Se. Six of them were dead now. Cuong and Xuan, the grandparents Quy had never met, stood in the center, surrounded by their daughters and son and son-in-law. To Grandfather Cuong’s right stood Aunt Nguyet and her husband, Uncle Phuc, and beside them was Aunt Kym. To Grandmother Xuan’s left was a much younger Phuong, and beside her was her younger brother, Quy’s Uncle Chien - the only two Trungs in the picture Quy had ever met. The only ones he’d ever met at all, aside from Tien.

The portrait had been drawn decades ago by Dai Li Agent Daiyu Fei, Quy’s father’s partner, while she and Shanyuan Dai been on a mission in Nanyue - the final mission the Dai Li would ever send to the province, as it’d turned out. During her stay there, Agent Daiyu had taken the time to sketch the Trungs, and she’d presented the picture to Phuong and Chien when they’d left their family to go with her and Shanyuan to Ba Sing Se. Phuong and Chien had cherished the image together for years, until Chien had decided to return to Nanyue.  _ “You keep it,” _ Quy remembered his uncle telling his mother.  _ “I’ll get to actually see them.” _ Phuong had kept the portrait in her bedroom for years. After her family’s demise, she’d incorporated it into the shrine.

The drawing, unfortunately, predated the family that Tien had known. Her mother wasn’t pictured - Chien wouldn’t marry until over twenty years later - and Nguyet and Phuc’s son hadn’t been born yet, let alone his own wife and children. There were no surviving pictures of those people, but their names were all present on the altar, written on small stone tablets. Tien’s mother, Vui. Uncle Phuc and Aunt Nguyet’s son, Manh Bao, and his wife Hong Kim - cousins Quy had never met. Their children, Dinh and Kim-Ly, who’d only been twelve and eight when the Fire Nation had executed them. 

Tien finished with the flowers, draping one last blossom over the little mouse-deer statue. Then she pulled its mate from where she’d kept it in her pocket and held it in her hands while she gazed at her family’s names.

The mice-deer were a set - a pair carved from the same block of yellow jade and brought from Nanyue by Chien, who’d held on to the little statues as keepsakes rather than hand them over to the Dai Li for cultural preservation. He’d preserved them himself on a shelf, keeping them as a reminder of his homeland. As a child, Quy had been fascinated by the little figurines, and Chien had often brought them down for him to have a look. Quy had spent many happy hours on the floor of his uncle’s study, making the mice-deer play with his other toys while Uncle Chien had read over reports on what was happening back in his homeland. The jade was thick and sturdy, and thus Chien hadn’t minded Quy playing with them - had encouraged it, even, saying that it was important that Quy have  _ something _ from Nanyue in his childhood.

“ _ But don’t bend them, Quy,” _ Chien had ordered, every time he took the figurines down from the shelf.  _ “Keep them as they are. _ ”

When Chien had returned to Nanyue to help with the war effort, he’d only taken one of the little mice-deer with him. The other had been left in Quy’s keeping.

_ “There, it’s symbolic, see? You’ll be a Dai Li agent just like your dad when you’re all grown up, you ought to know what symbolism is, yeah? I’ve got one, and you’ve got the other, and we’ve both got a little piece of each other.” _

Chien’s mouse-deer had eventually been passed down to Tien, and when Nanyue had burned it’d been the only bit of home she’d been able to save for herself. She’d brought it back to Ba Sing Se, scratched and nicked and broken after decades away from its pristine mate. When they’d made the family shrine for the Trungs, Quy and Tien had reunited the statues on the altar, and they’d sat there together ever since - save for those times when Tien needed her last shred of her homeland in her hands.

Like right now. Quy watched Tien idly run her fingers over the little figurine, and he knew it probably wasn’t going to spend much time in the shrine today. Or tomorrow. And, well, summer was coming up, and the mouse-deer tended to remain conspicuously absent from the shrine throughout the entire season. Quy knew he probably wouldn’t see much of the statue from here on out.

Phuong, as the eldest Trung present, led them through the prayers, and these were different than the ones for the Dais had been. Phuong’s well-wishes were a little more desperate, her requests that her family rest in peace more imploring, and if Tien stifled a sob when Phuong apologized to their ancestors for being unable to properly tend their graves, no one mentioned it.

Not until Tien brought it up herself, at least.

“I pray that this is enough to allow you to rest in peace,” Phuong said, and Tien blurted out, “I don’t think it is.”

“Tien,” Quy began, but she shook her head.

“No. No, I  _ know _ it’s not. They aren’t - how  _ could _ they be at peace? They’re out there - somewhere - restless and wandering, I just  _ know _ it - and I know we put the willows up to keep ghosts and dark spirits away, but is it selfish of me to wish we didn’t just so I could maybe see them and - and  _ ask _ \- ”

Quy grimaced at the thought. “Let them rest in peace, Tien.”

Her face crumpled. “That’s the thing, though,” she said. “I don’t think they  _ can _ . They were never laid to rest.” Their family’s bones were scattered over the lost battlefields and execution grounds of Nanyue.

“That’s not your fault,” Phuong said. “You had no choice; they’d understand. And you’ve done so much to honor them since - ”

“I doubt it’s been  _ enough _ ,” Tien said. “I don’t know where their bodies are. I’ve done my best to honor them, but my best is never  _ enough _ . It wasn’t enough to save Nanyue, it wasn’t enough to save our people - it’s not even enough to help them now that they’re  _ dead _ .”

“It’s alright,” Phuong soothed. “They’d understand. And they’d be proud of you, I’m sure.” She smiled sadly. “I failed them more than you ever could have.”

“No you  _ didn’t _ .” Tien’s retort was firm and fierce. “You didn’t  _ fail _ us, Aunt Phuong, we knew you were still fighting for us. You got us supplies and weapons and - and troops, even.”

“Not enough.”

“You did your best,” Tien said. “We knew you were doing your best. It’s not your fault no one else in this damn city  _ cared _ .”

Phuong patted Tien’s hand. “Then I think we’re in agreement, my dear, when we say that our best wasn’t enough.”

Tien put her hands to her face and sniffed. Phuong wrapped a firm arm around her shaking shoulders.

The two women shared a companionable, miserable silence, and Quy turned his attention from them to check on Hoang. She glanced up at him, and they shared a pensive look. They were outsiders here, the both of them - neither of them had ever been to Nanyue, nor had either of them ever known their lost family. They’d both been affected personally by the massacre - Hoang had been born out of it, even - but Phuong and Tien could relate to each other in ways that Quy and Hoang would never be able to fully understand.

The silence stretched on, Phuong making no move to continue the prayers, Tien sniffling occasionally. Eventually, Hoang shot Quy a sad smile and a slight shrug. He smiled back and lightly nudged her arm. This might take a while, but they’d wait for as long as was necessary. As long as their mothers needed.

* * *

The day moved on, and the the list of dead relatives Quy needed to take care of slowly grew shorter. His blood relations were done - the Dais could rest easy for another year, and hopefully the Trungs as well. Now he had to think of the families he’d married into.

Roulan’s family was the closest - her ancestral home was just down the street from his. Solada’s parents were far from Ba Sing Se, but that was what temples were for.

“You’re eating lunch with the Lis, yeah?” Ratana asked, somewhat distractedly. Her eyes and fingers were focused on the radish she was whittling into a rose. Something for her parents, Quy thought.

“Yes,” Quy said. “And visiting some ancestors.” Roulan’s family would have already cleaned and decorated their graves by now, but it was still important to pay their respects. It wouldn’t take them nearly as long to visit the Li graves as it had the Dais - unless Uncle Mu started going off on a history ramble or something. “We’ll meet you at the temple afterwards?”

“Sounds good,” Ratana said, finishing with the radish and grabbing a carrot. Hoang chose that moment to enter the kitchen, a tray of uneaten rice balls in her hands and a disgruntled twist to her mouth. Ratana shot her a weary look. “Your mother not in the mood for lunch?”

Hoang dropped the tray on the counter. “She’ll eat at Little Nanyue. She can’t say no to banh troi, especially when Miss Cuc makes it.” She grimaced and took a moment to lean over the counter. “At least, that’s what I’m banking on. I know it’s just sweets, but it’s better than nothing.”

Quy and Ratana exchanged looks.

“She’ll eat,” Ratana said, going back to the carrot. “She always does, eventually.”

“Every year I get worried she’s going to starve herself and not notice,” Hoang muttered.

“That’s why she has you, dear,” Ratana said. “To make sure she notices.” She handed Hoang the carrot. It’d been carved into a fish. “Here you go. Chin up, darling.”

Hoang took the little vegetable fish with a smile and bit its head off. Ratana started whittling up another one.

“Hoang!” Tien’s voice called from the courtyard. “We’re leaving!”

“Coming!” Hoang shouted back, tossing the last of the carrot in her mouth. “Thanks Aunt Ratana.”

“Anytime, dear.”

“I’ll see you all for dinner,” Hoang said, heading out of the kitchen.

“I’d better get going myself,” Quy said.

Ratana held out another carrot, this one carved into a flower. “Here. For the road.”

“It’s literally ten houses away,” Quy said.

“Ten houses you’ll need to walk past while hungry. Take it.”

Quy took the carrot flower. “This is why you’re my favorite sister-in-law.”

“I’m your  _ only _ sister-in-law,” Ratana snorted.

* * *

The Li graves were already swept and decorated when they went down to visit, and Quy and his children followed Roulan as she paid her respects to her ancestors. She left a cup of wine for her father and a bowl of rice for her grandfather, and Grandmother Bao-Zhai got an entire mound of chrysanthemums, because Grandmother Bao-Zhai had been a bit terrifying and Roulan really wanted her to continue watching over the family.

Roulan continued on down the line of graves, Sunan and Wenli and Kun in tow, but Quy paused before following. Zan remained kneeling before her great-grandmother’s tombstone, hands clasped in her lap and eyes closed. When she stayed like that longer than mere respect called for, he lowered himself to the ground beside her.

He was silent for a long moment, looking back and forth between his daughter and the stone. Bao-Zhai Li had been a formidable member of the Dai Li back in her day. She’d been born in Avatar Roku’s time, had had friends among the Air Nomads. When the war had broken out and the Avatar lost and the world descended into chaos, she’d been a staunch supporter of the 51st Earth King and responsible on several occasions for his continued survival. She’d been a highly respected Head of the Dai Li and Minister of Culture, known for her passion for the arts and her devotion to Avatar Kyoshi’s mandate and the organization meant to carry it out.

And it was no stretch to imagine that she’d probably be very upset by what Long Feng was doing with it.

“I see what you’re doing,” Quy said after a moment.

“Well I’m not exactly making a secret of it,” Zan said mildly, opening her eyes and turning her head to look at him.

Quy smiled at her, fond and proud and exasperated all at once. “I know,” he said. “ _ Everyone _ knows.”

Zan hummed. “Has the minister had anything to say about me recently?”

“Long Feng’s been too busy with recovering from the siege to think about your plans.”

“Just as well,” Zan shrugged. “He and I both know I’m plotting in the long term.” She looked at Bao-Zhai’s tombstone and frowned. “It’s going to be a while before we can restore the Dai Li to their former glory, but I’ll make it happen. With some help.” She shot her father a grin.

“No comment,” Quy sighed. He was one of Long Feng’s inner circle. It’d be  _ very _ rude to help his daughter plot to take over the man’s position.

Zan huffed. “Fine, I don’t need your help anyway. I’ve got Great-Grandmother Bao-Zhai here, and Grandpa Xin, and Grandpa Shanyuan, and - well, all the other Dais and Lis, really.” She looked down the cavern at the long line of Li graves.

“You do have no shortage of ancestral backup,” Quy agreed.

“I bet they’re all spinning like tops, with what Long Feng’s been doing,” Zan said, looking at Bao-Zhai’s grave. “I swear I’ll restore the Dai Li to their former glory, Great-Grandmother, but I need your  _ help _ .”

“You’re a lot like her,” Quy commented.

“I don’t think I’m that scary,” Zan sighed. She sounded disappointed.

Quy thought of all the times he’d witnessed his daughter defending her museum exhibits. “You’re getting there,” he said. “Just...please don’t go challenging Long Feng to any duels.  _ Please _ .”

Zan burst out laughing. “What, like Mom?”

Quy groaned. “It wasn’t funny,” he muttered, his gaze flicking further down the tunnel where Roulan was paying her respects to another generation of Lis. The time she’d dueled Long Feng over his changes in the Dai Li easily ranked in the top five worst days of Quy’s life.

“No duels,” Zan said. “Promise. Just...lots of careful networking that will eventually cause me to be appointed Minister of Culture.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less from you,” Quy said, equally proud and exasperated. “Come on, you’ve got other ancestors besides Bao-Zhai, you know.”

They continued all the way down the line of graves, paying their respects to every last ancestor from Roulan’s father to the first of the Lis - who, incidentally, had been best friends with the first of the Dais. Roulan stood before her oldest ancestors’ graves, and Quy took her hand and smiled at her. Their families had been intertwined since the beginning.

“Lunch now?” Kun asked hopefully, and Zan smacked him.

Roulan drank her father’s wine on the way out.

At the lunch table, Quy abided his mother-in-law’s idle chatter and Roulan’s uncle’s attempts to pry information on the Dai Li’s current activities out of him. Honestly, Mu was  _ retired _ , he had no reason to know classified information anymore. At least Roulan’s mother had handled her retirement from the Dai Li with much more grace - Peizhi Li was spending her golden years tending to her garden, her family, and her record number of wins at Pai Sho.

“For the last time, Uncle Mu,” Quy sighed when the old man tried to ask after a pair of agents who were currently undercover, “you really ought to spend your retirement  _ relaxing _ .”

Mu snorted and rapped him on the head, because while Quy was an old man, Mu was even older, and also was probably always going to see Quy as “Shanyuan’s boy” from down the street who his beloved niece liked playing in the mud with. “Son, when you’re retired and going stir-crazy, you’ll see where I’m coming from.”

“When I’m retired,” Quy retorted, “I’m going to spend my days  _ relaxing _ and enjoying time with my wife and my children and whatever grandchildren I manage to get” - doubtful, seeing as Zan had no interest in romance, Kun had no interest in women, and Sunan and Wenli had no interest in children - “and generally  _ not _ attempt to micro-manage or judge Dai Li affairs beyond how much of a pension they give me.”

“Bah! You’re going to find yourself sneaking into a museum to rearrange the exhibits, mark my words,” Mu huffed.

Several seats down the table, Zan dropped her chopsticks. “Uncle Mu, was that  _ you _ ?”

“What’s that, dearie? My hearing’s been acting up.”

“Yeah, your selective hearing, maybe,” Kun muttered into his tea.

“You say something, boy?” Mu asked sharply.

“No sir!”

“Uncle Mu, I worked on that pottery exhibit for  _ weeks _ !” Zan said.

“Well, you should have considered arranging the pieces by art style, not date!” Mu snapped back. “Much more artistic that way.”

“True, but my way provides viewers with a better understanding of the timeline and the style changes - ”

“Oh, so your museum’s some crummy university class now that just makes the students memorize dates and names, eh? No deeper thinking on the themes behind the art or - ”

“That wasn’t the exhibit’s purpose and you know it! Sunan, Wenli, back me up here - ”

As the historians descended into squabbling, Kun stared morosely into his cup. “Literally every conversation in this family ends in an argument about pottery.”

Quy patted his shoulder. “Not  _ every _ conversation,” he said consolingly.

“You’re right,” Kun said. “Sometimes it’s tapestries.” He sipped his tea.

“Well what do you know,” Mu said suddenly, “looks like it’s time for my nap.” He clambered to his feet and started shuffling away.

“Don’t you dare try to get away from this, Uncle - UNCLE MU!” Zan snapped as the old man broke into a run that belied his old age. Zan leapt up and ran after him, nearly bowling over Roulan’s brother Zheng and his husband in the process. “UNCLE MU GET BACK HERE!”

“And you people wonder why I’d rather be in Investigations,” Kun sighed.

Zan spent the rest of her visit unsuccessfully searching for Mu, Kun spent the rest of the visit smirking and snickering at something no one could discern, and Sunan and Wenli spent the rest of the visit socializing with their cousins like normal people. Quy and Roulan eventually announced it was time they left to join the Sais at the temple.

“So good to have you over,” Peizhi said as the family stood by the gate. “You ought to come by next weekend for dinner.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Roulan said, giving her mother a hug.

“Oh, and Quy,” Peizhi said. “If she has the time for it, tell your mother I’d like her to drop by and play some pai sho with me tomorrow.”

“I’ll let her know,” Quy said.

They left the house and made their way down the sunlit street at a brisk pace. The temple was within walking distance, but it was a long walk. Zan spent the first few minutes grumbling and swearing retribution. “Where on earth did he go? I know he’s a spry old man, but that was ridiculous. I couldn’t find him anywhere. I bet he wasn’t even in the house anymore!”

“He was hiding on the eaves over the drawing room window the whole time,” Kun said mildly. “You should really ask the Investigations agent when you have these problems, sis.”

Zan cursed. “Son of a - !”

“Need I remind you that anything you say is going to describe your Great-Grandmother Bao-Zhai?” Roulan asked.

Zan fell silent. And then she said, “Pretty sure Great-Grandmother Bao-Zhai would have been just as upset.”

“No,” Roulan chuckled. “She’d’ve been even worse.”

* * *

The temple was adorned with willow garlands and bouquets of flowers and many, many offerings of food that had been left before the shrine. It was easy to spot which ones had been left by the Sais - no one else in the Upper Ring was able to carve art into food the way Ratana could. A bouquet of radish roses and carrot flowers with cucumber leaves had been left at the foot of the marble lotus that held up the statue of Guanyin, the spirit of mercy. Similar offerings had been left before the statues of Avatar Kyoshi, Oma and Shu, and Hu-Tu, the spirit of the earth.

They found the Sais in the temple courtyard, talking quietly beside a fountain. Klahan smiled at them as they approached. “How was your parents’?” he asked Roulan.

“Oh,” Roulan said, “same old, same old. How are you?”

Klahan shrugged. “We prayed for my family already,” he said quietly. He looked tired, Quy noted, but he didn’t say anything. Klahan had been the only survivor after the Fire Nation had attacked his village in Sai An. Family, friends, and neighbors had been wiped out in a single morning.

“We’ve been waiting on you,” Klahan added, and he picked up a basket filled with Ratana’s signature vegetable and fruit carvings. He took his wife’s hand. “Come on, love,” he said, pulling her closer. “Let’s take care of your family.”

Ratana looked into Klahan’s somber eyes, a miserable twist to her mouth. Silent reassurances passed between them, and Quy politely turned away.

This was the part of Qingming that Quy honestly hated. Honoring dead Dais and Lis was one thing - they’d died well, at ripe old ages after living long and fulfilling lives, and all their graves were in neat rows under his and Roulan’s ancestral homes, easy to find and take care of. Honoring Quy’s Ba Sing Sean relatives was a celebration for lives well lived. But for the family that came from beyond the city’s walls, it was mourning for lives cut short. The Trungs were painful enough - Quy had grown up hearing stories of his Nanyuese relatives, only to have them all snatched away before he could meet them - but he’d never even known Solada’s family existed until long after they were gone. His wife’s family had been dead before he’d ever known he was going to care about them.

The war hung heavy on days like Qingming - always there, hovering in everyone’s thoughts. Sometimes they even quietly talked about it - private moments in secluded places where Quy wouldn’t feel the need to enforce the city’s laws. Normally he didn’t even have to - Ratana and Klahan had rarely spoken of the war or their experiences outside Ba Sing Se even before Long Feng had come to power. When the new policy had been put into place, they’d been more than happy to have an excuse to never speak of it again. But on Qingming, or the anniversaries of the Fire Nation’s attacks, it was hard to forget.

Quy glanced back at his brother- and sister-in-law. Ratana had taken the basket from Klahan’s hand and was poking through its contents. “Alright,” she said quietly. “Let’s get to it.”

They left the last of the food offerings on the shrine and said their prayers for Ratana’s family - for her father and brother and grandparents, who’d died by fire, and for her mother, who hadn’t survived the long journey to Ba Sing Se. And also for her other ancestors, farther back along the family line, whose tombs lay unattended and overgrown in Sai An.

“We had a sizable cemetery back home,” Ratana said, lighting incense. “I can’t imagine what it must be like now. All those graves and no one taking care of them…and my mother…” She trailed off, doubtlessly thinking of the grave in Yi Province.

Quy wanted to say to her the same thing he’d said to Solada all those years ago -  _ We’ll get her. Someday. You know where she is. We’ll travel back to that crossroads, and we’ll bring her here, and you’ll spend Qingming at her graveside. _ But it was an old promise, one that grew harder to fulfill with every year lost to the passage of time and every mile of land lost to fire. He’d promised it once, decades ago, and it’d made the sisters happy, had endeared him to them. He couldn’t promise it again - a second time would be empty, useless.

But the sentiment was still there, as he and Roulan said their prayers for their dead in-laws.

_ Someday _ , he promised himself, because he couldn’t imagine how he would manage if he didn’t know where his own family was buried. The Dai graves beneath the house had always been there, a source of comfort and belonging, and the very thought of not having that, of  _ losing _ it, was terrifying. He saw how much it hurt Tien, to not know where her family was. How much it’d hurt Solada and Ratana, to know where their mother was but have no way of getting there.

There was no way he’d ever be able to locate the Trungs’ bones, and there was nothing he could do for most of Solada’s family. But they knew where Sunee was, and one day, Quy intended to bring his mother-in-law to the city her daughters had come to call home. And if he never got the chance, then surely Niran and Sunan would retrieve their lost grandmother.

_ If Sunan could even survive that journey. _

The pessimistic thought hissed in the back of Quy’s mind, and he told himself to ignore it even as he instinctively glanced at his son to make sure he was alright. Sunan was lighting incense with Niran, hale and whole. But Sunan carried the same illness that’d stolen away his mother and grandmother, and Quy lived with the fear that one day, his son’s occasional painful flare-ups would leave him more than just bedridden. Traveling would probably only be detrimental to Sunan’s health - it’d certainly been for Solada and Sunee.

No matter - Quy and Roulan hoped to fetch Sunee’s bones themselves one day. It was the only thing they could do for the mother-in-law they’d never met.

Klahan, at least, had known her, albeit not for very long. Sunee had fallen ill and died a mere month after Ratana and Klahan’s marriage. “Look,” he said to Ratana, pulling out a small bouquet of chrysanthemums. “I brought your mother’s favorite flowers.”

Ratana lightly smacked his arm, smiling sadly. “You don’t know my mother.”

“I knew her long enough,” he chuckled, kissing Ratana’s hand. It was an old joke that Quy had never fully understood. Solada had tried to explain it once - something to do with Ratana and Klahan’s courtship on the road - but in the end she’d just shrugged and said “You had to be there.”

Klahan placed the flowers on the altar beside Niran and Sunan’s incense, and Ratana arranged the last of her fruits and vegetables into a beautiful, edible bouquet that the temple’s clerics would surely appreciate later. Once she was satisfied with the display and after a final prayer to Guanyin for her lost relatives, she turned back to the family.

“Well,” she said. “It’s been a long morning. How about some fresh air?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave kudos or a comment if you liked it! :)
> 
> The Trung family is totally definitely named after the famous Vietnamese sisters Trung Trac and Trung Nhi, who led a rebellion against Vietnam's Chinese overlords back in the Han Dynasty era in 40 AD. They were born to a military family and were very well educated in warfare, so when Trung Trac's husband got executed by the Chinese as a warning, the Trung sisters basically went "eff this", gathered an army of equally angry women, and pushed the Chinese back. They were eventually defeated three years later but not before being totally awesome and causing the Chinese a lot of embarrassment. Today they're still revered in Vietnam as national heroines and [you should really look them up because history is fascinating.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tr%C6%B0ng_Sisters) /preservation agent ramble
> 
> Fruit carving is a traditional Thai art and it's beautiful so if you're so inclined go to google images and look up "fruit carving" okay [it's gorgeous.](https://www.google.com/search?q=fruit+carving&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjx76G97vTQAhVT1mMKHdxUDEsQ_AUICCgB&biw=1366&bih=587) I loved looking up pictures of it while writing this fic so I could picture what Ratana might be whittling away at.
> 
> Idk if anyone remembers Old Mu, who was mentioned in Gilded Green as being Enlai's former partner and a recent retiree. He's a rambunctious old man and I love him.
> 
> So I already mentioned this on Tumblr, but I probably won't be updating this fic next week because I really, really want to post the Tuan fic on or near the solstice, or at the very least by the new year. "What's the Tuan fic?" you ask, because Caelum is terrible about communicating her writing intentions to her readers. That Time Tuan Got Plastered is about, well, that time Dai Li Director of Surveillance Tuan Teng got plastered. At the Earth King's Winter Solstice party. And incited a certain drunken bet amongst the other Dai Li directors. And every. single. year. I tell myself "y'know what, Caelum, you should really write that fic for the holiday season" and I answer myself "yep that's a good idea" and then I just don't do it because I suck.
> 
> THIS YEAR, though. THIS YEAR WILL BE DIFFERENT. Because this year I will at least TRY, and with any luck I will succeed, and get the darn thing posted by the new year if not by the solstice.
> 
> Really not sure how that's gonna affect the updates to BBPS here, because I'd really rather focus on hammering TTTGP into shape than on putting the final touches on BBPS to post it, so we'll see what happens. I'll keep you posted on the gilded-green tumblr.


	4. In Which Spring is Enjoyed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And back to BBPS! Thank you everyone for being patient with me during the holidays while I was trying to get the Tuan fic up. ^_^
> 
> (It is up, btw, in case you weren't aware. If you wanna read ~14k about terrible Upper Ring holiday parties and a drunk Dai Li Director of Surveillance, go check out That Time Tuan Got Plastered.)
> 
> This chapter was fun to write. We finally get away from dead people (mostly)! And also from angst (mostly). Okay, there's still some, life is a never-ending low-key drama and all families have issues, but still, we aren't crying over people who got murdered by the Fire Nation in this one so there's that. Also, spring is pretty, and so is the Upper Ring.
> 
> Does this one really need warnings? I don't know, hmm...
> 
> Warnings for:  
> -Allusions to Ba Sing Se being kinda messed up  
> -The Dai Li generally being creeps  
> -Sunan's health issues being an issue with his in-laws  
> -Mention of body horror and cannibalism in a historical/mythological setting  
> -Caelum playing hard and fast with Chinese history/mythology
> 
> On with the fic!

Qingming was meant to celebrate the living as much as the dead, and today Ba Sing Se had been graced with the kind of beautiful weather that made life worth living. The cool air moved in slight breezes, flowering trees lined the streets, the sky was a delicate shade of blue, and everything was clear and bright. Rather than head straight home from the temple, the Dai family took the long way back, detouring through a park to amble through the blossoming wonderland. Winding paths lined with blooming trees led them around little hills dotted with bushes, and a babbling brook glittered in the distance. Here in the Upper Ring there was room for such things - wide open spaces for nothing but nature and the enjoyment of it, with no buildings to mar the landscape save for a few pavilions and a pagoda.

The family drifted away from each other, stringing out in twos and threes along the path - Ratana and Klahan hung back, talking quietly, while Kun and Zan hurried on ahead, Niran following after them with a mildly exasperated sigh. Sunan and Wenli slipped off to the first secluded pavilion they passed, and Quy and Roulan exchanged smirks. They smirked again when, up ahead, Zan grabbed Kun’s hand and yanked him forward, towards the bridge that crossed the brook.

“Remember when we used to bring them here as kids?” Roulan asked. “We had to be prepared to drag soggy, muddy children home. Every. Single. Time.”

Quy watched Kun and Zan turn off the path before they reached the bridge in favor of heading down to the stream itself. “I’m getting the feeling that hasn’t changed.”

Roulan pursed her lips for a moment before shrugging. “It’s a beautiful spring day, and they’re grown adults who can make their own decisions.”

Quy snorted.

They walked in silence for a moment, passing by shrieking children and smiling elders and young lovers walking hand-in-hand. The park was busy today; now that the citizens of Ba Sing Se had fulfilled their filial duties, it was time for the Qingming tradition of a spring outing, and everyone was out enjoying the beautiful weather. A number of people were having picnics, and children ran and played in the grass. Off in the distance, Quy saw two teams engaged in a lively game of tug-of-war, and a little beyond that a group of people played earthball. Swings had been put up throughout the park for the holiday, and people were taking turns on them. A small band of musicians had set themselves up in one of the pavilions, and their music wafted over the hills.

“Do you remember the first time we brought Solada here?” Roulan asked.

Quy smiled. “Yes.”

It’d been a not-unbearably-warm day, towards the end of summer and the start of Quy and Roulan realizing that they wanted the refugee girl they’d met in the Lower Ring as more than just an acquaintance. Solada had only been in Ba Sing Se for a few months and had only known Quy and Roulan for a few weeks, but one day while going over the list of neighbors she knew had managed to save artifacts the Dai Li might be interested in, she’d let it slip how much she missed _space._ The city was crowded, the Lower Ring most of all. She hadn’t seen a field since she’d taken the train through the Agrarian Zone on her way from the Outer Wall’s gate to the Lower Ring. For someone who’d grown up in a mountain village, it was a hard adjustment.

It’d been an impulsive decision - mostly Roulan’s - to take Solada on the train with them back to the Upper Ring. It hadn’t been easy - the day before had been one of Solada’s bad days and her muscles were still sore, so they’d moved slowly. She hadn’t had the necessary papers to allow her passage into the Upper Ring, either, but Quy and Roulan had taken care of that with a few allusions to Dai Li business. They’d paid her fare while they were at it, because while Solada hadn’t said anything they hadn’t missed the way her fingers twisted her nearly-empty coin purse.

It’d been worth it when they’d gotten her to the park, though. Solada had stared at the green, grassy fields, the leafy trees, the stream - and promptly burst into tears. Roulan had been flustered and anxiously apologetic, uncertain of how to handle the situation, but Quy had wrapped an arm around Solada’s shoulders consolingly, because he had a vague idea of what she was feeling. He’d remembered how his Uncle Chien had slowly gone stir-crazy while standing outside surrounded by buildings, remembered how his mother was more relaxed whenever she was in a space that wasn’t surrounded by walls. Ba Sing Se was spacious enough for those who’d lived there their entire lives, but for people who were used to fields and forests and mountains, it could be suffocating.

They’d walked through the park until Solada mentioned that her legs were hurting, and then they’d flopped down on the grass and watched the clouds go by, and Solada had smiled and laughed and breathed deeply, and if any of the Upper Ring citizens thought it odd that a foreign girl in shabby clothes was in their domain, well. They weren’t going to question her when two Dai Li agents flanked her sides.

“I miss her,” Roulan said, interrupting Quy’s memory.

Quy squeezed her hand. “Me too.”

Their reminiscing was interrupted by a shout from the creek.

“BOTH OF YOU STOP.”

Quy and Roulan looked toward the water to find Kun and Zan in the midst of a standoff, each with a ball of dripping mud hovering beside their outstretched arms. Niran stood between them, one arm reaching out toward each sibling and a despairing expression on his face. Zan and Kun didn’t seem to notice - their eyes were locked on each other and their grins were full of mischief.

“Hm,” Ratana said as she and Klahan came up beside Quy and Roulan. “This looks familiar.”

“Just a little,” Roulan smirked.

Klahan sighed and shook his head. Down the hill, Zan moved in an attempt to get a clearer shot at Kun, and Niran quickly shifted to block her. “He has to know how this is going to end,” Klahan said.

“Oh, I’m sure he does,” Ratana said, looking their son up and down. “Why do you think he looks so resigned?”

“Those two have been making trouble since before Zan could talk. After all these years, it’s pretty obvious they’re never gonna stop. I’m shocked Niran doesn’t just let them have at it by now.”

“He cares too much,” Roulan shrugged. “Besides, I’m not complaining. It’s entertaining.”

Klahan laughed. “True.”

They watched Kun feint to the right before quickly jerking to the left, but Niran had expected the trick and followed him easily. “Just calm down and drop the mud,” he pleaded.

Zan and Kun hadn’t broken eye contact the entire time, and now, in the split-second that Niran had to realize the mistake in his phrasing, they exchanged identical smirks. “Okay!” they chorused.

“No, wait - !”

Two mudballs hit Niran square-on, Zan’s on his chest and Kun’s on his back. The brown splatters stood out on his otherwise-pristine white robes. Niran closed his eyes and sighed. “I hate you both,” he said. “So, so much.”

“Aw, why? We did what you said. We dropped the mud,” Kun grinned. “And we’re calm.”

 _“So_ much.”

“Yeah,” Klahan chuckled, “that’s about what I was expecting.”

“I have no sympathy,” Ratana shrugged. “He knew it was coming.”

“And he really ought to _know better_ than to give them that opening.”

“Exactly,” Ratana said. “Besides, it’s just mud. No harm done. He’s a laundry expert by now.” As she spoke, Niran bent the mud off his chest, grumbling as he pulled out every last fleck of dirt. “There, see? Good as new.”

Quy noted that a number of the children who’d been playing in the grass were watching Niran and Kun and Zan with interest. A few of them were slowly creeping forward, one step at a time. “I do hope they don’t give those kids any ideas.”

“What,” Roulan said, “scared the neighbors will get upset at us?”

“I don’t want to be known as the father of the grown adults who instigated a mud war, Roulan.”

Roulan snorted. “Please, Quy. We’re Dai Li. Who would dare complain?”

Down in the mud, Zan was chiding Niran. Neither of them seemed to notice the encroaching children. “I think you need to work on your blocking technique. You _knew_ those hits were coming and you barely even _moved.”_

“Forgive me for putting my faith in you two being able to act like adults,” Niran sighed, reaching around himself to bend the mud off his back.

“In case you haven’t heard, we _are_ adults,” Kun said. “Therefore, by definition, anything we do _is_ acting like adults.”

Niran huffed, still trying to get at the mud. It was harder to extract than the stuff on his chest had been - he couldn’t see what he was doing. Zan watched him grapple for a moment before snickering. “Oh, here, let me help you with that,” she said, going around him and deftly bending the mud from the fabric. The dirt pulled free from the fibers, leaving nary a stain behind.

The children had been watching quietly, but now one of them spoke. “Ooh! Can you teach me how to do that? Mom and Dad get upset whenever I come home and my clothes are dirty.”

Zan, Kun, and Niran suddenly realized they had an audience. Niran blinked at the kids. “We seem to have acquired children,” he announced.

Kun eyed the children with the wary look of a man who’d only ever grown up with two younger family members and hadn’t had a pleasant experience with either. Zan just looked ecstatic. _“Students,”_ she said, eyes gleaming.

Quy immediately turned and started walking in the opposite direction.

“Where are _you_ going?” Roulan asked amusedly.

“To obtain plausible deniability,” he answered, striding forward. Half the children in the district were clustered around his daughter, and when their parents came knocking on Quy’s door to ask why their kids suddenly knew peculiar earthbending techniques or some of the bloodier aspects of their country’s history, he didn’t want to have an answer for them.

Not that anyone would dare complain to a Director of the Dai Li, of course. But still. It was the principle of the thing.

Behind him, he heard Roulan and Ratana laughing at him, and then Klahan said something and they all started chattering, but the voices faded as Quy moved on. It looked like he’d be on his own for now, then. Deciding to see what else was going on in the park today, he let his feet carry him away from whatever strange education his daughter had planned, up and over a hill and safely out of sight of his family. He was closer to the pavilion with the musicians now, and he could hear the first notes of _Melody of Plumblossoms_ budding, the music soft and small before slowly unfurling into a gentle tune with an even beat. People lounged on the grass, some picnicking, others just relaxing with the music. He recognized some of them as neighbors, and they smiled and nodded and said their hellos as he passed by. An impromptu dance party had started up near the musicians themselves, and a quartet of women gracefully stepped in a circle, swinging long, colorful sleeves. Quy took a moment to admire their footwork - dance had never been his area of study, but it _was_ nice to watch - and then someone shouted “Hi Dad!” He turned to see Sunan and Wenli, grinning down at him from where they sat high in the air, and then their swing whooshed back down to earth and up again in the other direction.

Quy smiled and approached them, careful to stay out of their flight path. _“There_ you two are,” he said. “Having fun?”

“Oh, definitely!” Sunan grinned. “Why’re you all alone?”

“Your siblings and cousin have caught the attention of a crowd of children, and I didn’t want to bear witness to whatever happens next.”

“Ha!” Sunan laughed. “Oh, boy. I’m sure it won’t be too bad. Zan and Niran are great with kids, I’m sure they’ll be able to handle them! Kun...not so much.”

“Kun spent his formative years getting chewed on by your sister and Hoang, so we can forgive him for that,” Quy said. “Also, Zan and Niran being able to handle a crowd of impressionable children is exactly what I’m afraid of.”

Sunan snickered. Wenli smiled, but it looked a little wan.

Quy frowned at her. “Wenli, are you alright?”

She groaned. “I...don’t want to talk about kids right now, sorry.”

Sunan shot her an apologetic look. Quy just blinked, nonplussed. “What’s wrong?”

Wenli groaned again. She stopped leaning into the motions and just sat still as the swing continued going back and forth, up and down. Sunan stopped as well, and the swing slowly lost momentum, the peak of its flight becoming lower and lower until it was only moving a few inches forward, a few inches back.

Quy looked back and forth between his son and daughter-in-law. “Say,” he said, “are you two planning on visiting Wenli’s family today, or…?”

She groaned for a third time and put her head in her hands. “I prayed for my ancestors this morning,” she said. “And I left offerings at their graves yesterday.”

“So...you aren’t going to visit your parents,” Quy surmised.

Wenli leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees, her head still in her hands. “Mom’s on one of her why-haven’t-you-given-me-grandchildren kicks,” she said. “And she’s been getting _very_ insistent about it, and I am _so tired_ of having the same conversation over and over and over again.”

“Doesn’t your sister have kids?” Quy asked.

“Yes! And my brother! But apparently that’s not enough!”

Sunan patted his wife’s back. “I told her we could still go if she wanted to, just for a bit. But she doesn’t want to at all, so.” He shrugged.

“I’m tired of arguing with her,” Wenli said. “And Dad doesn’t say anything but he doesn’t stop Mom from saying anything either so I know he agrees with her. And I’m just...not in the mood to deal with that.”

“But it’s Qingming,” Quy said. If there was ever a day to put aside family squabbles, it was this one.

“I know it’s Qingming, I _know,”_ Wenli said, lifting her head to face him. “And I know Mom’s going to be upset with me, but I’m reaching the point where I really don’t care anymore.” At Quy’s horrified look, she rolled her eyes and added, “About her _opinion,_ spirits, it’s not like I left my ancestors uncared-for! I told you, I took care of them yesterday. But I don’t want to see my mother right now. Some of the things she’s been saying…” She trailed off with a grimace.

“What’s she been saying?” Quy asked. When Wenli didn’t answer, he looked at Sunan, but his son only shrugged.

“I don’t know. She’s been vague about that.”

“I’d rather not repeat it,” Wenli grumbled. “But you _know_ what she’s been on about.”

Quy frowned, confused, but Sunan’s face suddenly fell. “Spirits - she’s blaming this on _me_ again, isn’t she?”

 _“What?”_ Quy asked.

Wenli sighed. “...Yeah.”

“Wait,” Quy said, “wait, I thought your mother understood when you got married that - that - ”

“That I don’t want kids because I don’t want kids, not because I’m worried they’ll be born with a debilitating, incurable illness?” Wenli asked drolly. “Yeah. I thought she understood then, too.”

“This is insulting on so many levels,” Sunan muttered.

“I know, right?” Wenli said, leaning into him. “If we wanted kids, we’d have kids! If we wanted kids who definitely didn’t inherit their dad’s sickness, we’d adopt kids! But we just don’t want kids, and my mom refuses to accept that as reality.” She shrugged.

“Why didn’t you tell me this was an issue?” Quy demanded.

Sunan blinked up at him. “My in-laws, my problem,” he shrugged. “Also it’s only become a big deal again in the last few months, and you’ve been...busy.”

Quy grimaced. The siege had kept everyone busy. “I still would’ve liked to know. Maybe I could…” He trailed off, uncertain.

“What, intimidate her into shutting up about it?” Sunan grinned.

Wenli groaned. “That’s the other thing - she doesn’t _dare_ complain about it in front of Sunan or you or anyone else because she doesn’t want to upset the powerful Dai Li director, and then she, like...completely forgets that I, too, am Dai Li? And that I don’t want to hear it? _Ugh.”_

“Maybe we could get Reeducation to make her forget she wants you to have children,” Sunan offered.

“I doubt they’d waste their time and talent on something so frivolous,” Wenli muttered. “Besides, that’d be like cheating. Also I don’t want my mother reeducated.”

Quy thought about the Firebender under the lake, and realized that Shirong owed him. “Are you sure? Because I’m certain I could convince Shirong - ”

“Don’t worry about it,” Wenli said, waving her hand. “I don’t think it’d help, not really. I mean, maybe for a little bit, but...I just want my mom to really _understand.”_

Sunan patted her back again.

“Sometimes parents just _don’t,”_ Quy said, as comfortingly as he could. “When Roulan and Solada and I started dating all together, it certainly threw my mother for a loop.”

“Heh,” Wenli said. “Yeah, I can imagine. How...how’d you get her to accept it?”

Quy shrugged. “Time, I guess. And very patient explanations. We were lucky, really - Mother’s always been rather open-minded. My father helped out a lot - he understood somewhat, but that was because he was Dai Li and, well, we all know about Avatar Kyoshi and her spouses. So he helped my mother understand, and over time she just...accepted it.”

Wenli grimaced. “My mom’s had three years to accept that Sunan and I aren’t having kids.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Let me know if you change your mind about reeducation.”

Wenli rolled her eyes. “Thanks.”

“Maybe we _should_ adopt a kid,” Sunan mused.

She shot him a betrayed look. “Sunan, I don’t want kids at all!”

“I know, me neither, but hear me out! We adopt a kid. On paper it’s ours. In actuality we give it to Zan, who molds it into the perfect little mini-Dai Li agent according to her whims. Niran can help too. But we tell your mother it’s ours.”

Wenli snickered. “That plan is ridiculous and my mother would see right through it.”

“True,” Sunan grinned back, “but it made you laugh.”

She giggled and pecked him on the cheek. “Alright,” she said. “Enough about kids, though. Come on, other people want to use the swing.” She nodded at another couple a few dozen feet off, watching the dancers while pretending they weren’t waiting very patiently.

“Let’s go see what everyone else is up to, then,” Sunan said as he stood up, gallantly holding a hand out to Wenli to help her to her feet.

“Must we?” Quy sighed.

Sunan grinned. “Maybe Zan’s explained death by a thousand cuts to those kids by now.”

* * *

“Or cannibalism,” Sunan said. “Cannibalism’s good, too.”

“This is why I walked away,” Quy muttered.

 _“Shhh,”_ Wenli admonished them both. “This story is important!”

Zan and Niran sat on the grass before their crowd of acquired children. Quy recognized the kids from around the neighborhood; the children of minor politicians and government officials and army officers and other assorted people who were not nobility and not necessarily important but definitely upper class. Zan and Niran were animatedly telling a story with the help of little figures made of mud that they earthbent to act out the parts, while Kun lounged in the audience beside some of the older kids.

“...and so Prince Er was exiled, and he spent nineteen years wandering throughout the Earth Kingdoms with his followers,” Zan was saying. “One hot summer day, when he was very hungry and their supplies had been stolen and they had hardly anything to eat, his loyal companion Ji Tuan brought him some meaty soup. The food revived Prince Er and helped him regain his strength. It was only after he had finished it that he thought to ask Ji Tuan where he’d found the meat, and Ji Tuan explained…”

“‘I cut it out of my own leg!’” Niran said, and the figure that represented Ji Tuan lost an entire leg to artistic interpretation.

“Ew!” some of the kids yelped.

“I know,” Zan grinned.

“He cut off his _whole leg?!”_ one little girl gasped. “How did Prince Er not notice his friend was missing a leg?!”

“No, no,” Niran said quickly, restoring Ji Tuan’s leg while Zan skewered him with a disappointed look for the historical inaccuracy. “Just a part of it.”

“But _where_ on his leg did he cut it from?” the girl, who was apparently willing to think way too deeply into things, asked. “And which leg was it?”

“Most accounts agree it was his thigh,” Zan said, reaching out a finger to bend a sizable chunk of earth from the figure’s leg. “And we aren’t sure which leg it was, but probably wherever it was easier for his dominant hand to reach.”

“Was there a lot of blood? Did it hurt him? Could he walk afterwards?”

“Most likely, I would imagine so, and...hm. Well, none of the records indicate whether or not Ji Tuan had a limp afterwards, though it might have been left out…”

“Depending on where the cut was and how deep it went it’s possible he would have had trouble walking,” Niran added, making the little mud man hobble around. “Pretty sure he didn’t hamstring himself at least, but it probably cut into the muscle…”

“So gross,” one boy muttered.

“Very gross,” Zan agreed with him. “But desperate times call for desperate measures, and Ji Tuan and Prince Er were pretty desperate.”

“It wasn’t the best _er_ a of their lives,” Kun commented to one of the kids. The child giggled.

“Why didn’t the prince just come to Ba Sing Se?” another boy asked. Quy recognized him as the son of a family that lived just a block away from the Dais’ house. “I thought everyone who was in trouble came to Ba Sing Se.”

Zan blinked at him, momentarily thrown by the unexpected question. Before she could formulate a response, however, Kun perked up. “Who told you that?” he asked, casually curious.

The boy shrugged, apparently oblivious to the dangers of Dai Li agents asking that question. “One of my mom’s servant girls. She says _lots_ of people come to Ba Sing Se because there’s trouble outside the city.”

“Hm,” Kun said. “What’s her name?”

“Fan Li.”

“Did Fan Li come to Ba Sing Se because there was trouble?”

The kid shrugged again. “I dunno. Maybe? I don’t listen to her much.”

“Huh,” said Kun, and he looked back at Zan. “So tell us, sis, why didn’t Prince Er just come to Ba Sing Se when he was in trouble?”

Zan only looked slightly miffed at her brother turning her story into an intel collection session - she was mollified by the chance to educate. “Oh, well. Ba Sing Se as we know it actually didn’t exist yet - it was nothing but a small crystal-mining town at the time. Prince Er’s story happened a hundred years before the first wall even went up!”

“There wasn’t a _wall?”_ the boy asked, staring at her like the very concept had never occurred to him. It probably hadn’t.

“Nope!” Zan grinned. “The first wall wasn’t built until a hundred years later.” She raised a small, lopsided ring of earth meant to represent the city’s innermost wall that now encircled the palace. “Over time the city expanded, and every time it went too far past the wall they just added another one.” Three more rings popped up around the first one. “By the end of the Warring Kingdoms period there was a small series of walls along portions of the border” - a few short, unconnected lines of dirt pushed up far away from the outermost ring - “but it wasn’t until the First Earth Queen united the Earth Kingdoms that she consolidated those small walls into the Outer Wall and officially gave Ba Sing Se its name...” The miscellaneous bits of wall were suddenly connected, reinforced, and formed a full circle around the other rings. “And then of course the Outer Wall also underwent expansions and revisions over the years, but generally it hasn’t changed much…”

Somewhere during the explanation the kids’ eyes had glazed over. So had Kun’s.

Zan sighed and simplified it. “Before Ba Sing Se was Ba Sing Se, there weren’t any walls.”

“Oh,” said one of the kids. “Okay, that makes sense.”

“No it doesn’t!” wailed another one, who had apparently never considered that Ba Sing Se might not always have been Ba Sing Se.

“Don’t worry,” Zan said, as consolingly as she could to a child whose worldview she’d just shattered. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

“Anyway,” Niran continued, “Back to the story! Prince Er was so moved by his friend’s sacrifice that he promised to reward him greatly. Well, years later, after a whole lot of traveling and meeting people from other lands and fighting, Prince Er was finally restored as the rightful ruler of his land! So now he was Duke Er, and since he was in charge now his followers began asking for rewards and promotions. Duke Er was so happy that they’d supported him that he pretty much gave them whatever they asked for. But guess who he forgot about?”

“...Ji Tuan?” one kid ventured.

“Yes, exactly. He totally forgot about Ji Tuan.”

“But Ji Tuan cut off his leg for him!” one boy shouted indignantly.

 _“Part_ of his leg, he only cut off _part_ of his leg,” Zan said, shooting Niran an annoyed look.

“But how could Duke Er forget about Ji Tuan?” the boy demanded.

“It’s like their friendship was just _er_ ased,” Kun commented. The kid next to him snickered.

“If it makes you feel better, Duke Er felt the same way when he realized he’d forgotten his most loyal supporter,” Niran said to the indignant boy. “He felt pretty stupid. And embarrassed.”

“So did he go tell him thank you?”

“Well...Ji Tuan had no political goals, and he felt that many of his former companions had become hypocritical and power-hungry. So he’d already left the court by the time Duke Er remembered him, and he and his mother traveled deep into the forest to live a simple life.” He pulled a miniature mud mountain from the ground, and two little mud figures could be seen disappearing into it. “Duke Er sent messengers to call Ji Tuan back to court, but no matter how many he sent, Ji Tuan refused to come.”

“Poor messengers got stuck with a fruitless _er_ rand,” Kun said.

“Duke Er was so upset that Ji Tuan would not come back that he ordered his troops to go search for him,” Zan said. “But Ji Tuan and his mother hid themselves so well in the mountains that not even the most skilled trackers or earthbenders or eelhounds could find them.”

“Should’ve used a shirshu,” Kun muttered.

“So Duke Er ordered his troops to burn down the forest to force Ji Tuan out of hiding.”

“The whole forest?” a kid gasped.

“The _whole forest,”_ Zan confirmed, very seriously. The mini mountain was suddenly surrounded by fine dust clouds that swirled ominously, like smoke.

“It just kinda _er_ rupted into flames.”

Zan ignored her brother. “And so for three days the forest burned until it was nothing but ashes, but there was no sign of Ji Tuan or his mother.”

“Not the brightest idea, really,” Kun said. “Well, no, actually I’m sure it was very bright. But still. _My friend won’t come out of the forest,_ **_er_** _go I’ll just burn it down!_ Yeah. Sure.” The kid next to him snorted.

“When the flames died down,” Zan continued, “Duke Er and his men went searching for them, only to find that poor Ji Tuan had died lying against a burnt willow tree, his mother in his arms. Hidden in a hollow on the tree was a scrap of cloth that had a poem on it, written in blood, encouraging Duke Er to be a diligent ruler and create a _clear_ and _bright_ era.”

“Qingming!” one of the kids burst out.

Zan grinned at her. “Indeed. So even in death, Ji Tuan was loyal to his friend and ruler. Of course, Duke Er hadn’t meant for his friend to die - ”

“He really _er_ red there,” Kun said. The kids around him giggled.

“ - and was so overcome with guilt at his actions - ”

“Guess you could say he realized the _er_ ror of his ways.”

“ - that he established a festival in Ji’s honor,” Zan said, shooting her brother a stern look.

“And that was Qingming?” one little girl asked, eyes alight.

“Nope!” Zan said. “That was Hanshi, the Cold Foods Festival.”

The girl blinked up at her, nonplussed. “I thought you were telling us the story of Qingming.”

“We’re getting there,” Niran broke in. “So you see, Duke Er proclaimed that for the anniversary of the three days the forest burned, no one should use fire out of remembrance for Ji Tuan. The next year, during the first Cold Foods Festival, Duke Er returned to the site of Ji Tuan’s tomb.” Niran raised a bit of earth in the approximate shape of a turtleback tomb. Beside it a spindly tree of mud sprang up. “To his surprise, he found that the burned willow tree Ji Tuan had died against was still alive and growing well! Taking this as a sign that Ji Tuan’s spirit was appeased, Duke Er proclaimed that day Qingming, and _that_ was how we got the Qingming Festival.”

“So he _er_ ected two festivals in honor of his friend.”

“And that’s why we remember our ancestors on Qingming?” another kid asked. “Because Duke Er remembered Ji Tuan?”

“Well, traditionally, this time of spring was used to remember and honor the dead long before Duke Er and Ji Tuan’s time,” Zan said. “And for a long time it was also when people celebrated the nice spring weather. So while the festivals were meant to commemorate Ji Tuan specifically, the traditions that already existed were mixed in as well. So we remember our ancestors on Qingming because we’ve _always_ remembered our ancestors around this time of year, and Duke Er helped to solidify that tradition into a single, nationwide event.”

The kids looked confused.

“I know,” Zan said, “it’s not very straightforward. But that’s how it goes, generally - new traditions are born out of old ones. Qingming as we know it isn’t even what it was like when Duke Er started it all those thousands of years ago - it’s changed a lot over the years. Originally the Cold Foods Festival and the Qingming Festival were two separate events, but over time they were combined. And the Qingming Festival itself lasted for about a month, but over the years it’s grown shorter and shorter. Now we only celebrate Qingming for one day. And for a while, tomb sweeping itself happened during the Cold Foods Festival, the day before Qingming, but that’s changed. And there was this tradition where the Earth King would bestow fire upon his subjects the day after the Cold Foods Festival, to show his benevolence, but that went out of fashion a few hundred years ago...”

The kids were starting to look bored. Niran idly nudged Zan’s knee.

“But anyway,” Zan finished, “that’s the story of how Duke Er began the Qingming Festival.”

Thoroughly underwhelmed, the kids said, “Oh.”

Kun snorted. “And of course we’ve been celebrating Qingming for over two thousand years now, so you could say that Duke Er did a good job of making sure his friend’s memory never _er_ oded.”

The kids laughed. And then they were all getting up and going their separate ways, some calmly, others running and shouting. A few ran right past Quy where he stood with Sunan and Wenli, and he watched them dart over the grass with a smile. It seemed like just yesterday his own children had been so small and rambunctious.

Granted, they were still rambunctious.

Kun scooted a little closer to his sister. “So the moral of the story is, don’t force someone into accepting whatever gifts you feel obliged to give them or they might end up dead?”

“The moral of the story is I’m a good sister for not clobbering you,” Zan deadpanned, and she beaned him with a pebble.

“Ow! Zan!”

“Actually since it’s a historical account there isn’t really a _moral,_ but you could argue that Ji Tuan and Duke Er can inspire you to be a righteous and filially pious person,” Niran said.

“Heh,” Kun said. “Not much of a moral, no literary themes…”

“It’s history,” Zan said. “History is messy.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed,” Kun said, rolling his eyes. “It’s not a story, it’s just a bunch of weird stuff that happened.”

Zan grinned at him. “That’s what makes it awesome.” Her smile fell a bit. “I don’t think the kids really shared that opinion, though.”

Niran shrugged. “They’re kids. They’re in it for blood, guts, and adventure.”

“Well, you got the blood part at least,” Kun muttered.

Zan shrugged. “I think it was just hard for them to deal with the...facts.”

“You _did_ have a lot of facts,” Kun said.

“It’s still an important story,” Quy spoke up, and he extended a hand down to Zan to help her to her feet. “It’s good that they heard it.”

“I just wish I’d had more time to figure out how to tell it,” Zan said as she stood. “It was always great when you and Mom told it, even with all the facts. I always listened.”

“That’s because you’re a _nerd,”_ Kun chortled.

Sunan lightly kicked his brother. “I always listened too, you know.”

“You are _both_ nerds,” Kun said, retaliating by grabbing hold of Sunan’s leg.

 _“You’re_ five!” Sunan said, attempting to break free. Wenli laughed at her husband’s predicament, stepping back to stay out of Kun’s reach.

“No, I’m just an opportunist,” Kun said, anchoring his brother in place. “And you’re a dork.”

“Oh, yeah? Well you’re outnumbered!”

“Haha, well _you’re_ \- wait, what? _Oomph!”_ Kun gaped like a fish when Niran suddenly dogpiled on top of him. The ensuing kerfuffle resulted in Sunan getting dragged to the ground.

“...Anyway,” Zan said, turning her attention from the wrestling boys. “I’m sure I could figure out a way to keep the story historically accurate _and_ engaging…” She trailed off, frowning.

“Face it, sis,” Kun grunted from where Niran had him and Sunan in headlocks. “Historical timelines just don’t lend themselves well to good storytelling. They’re never clear-cut enough.”

“Says the guy who doesn’t even _work_ with history!”

“Nerd!”

Zan stuck her tongue out at him.

“I despair of any of you ever acting like adults,” Niran sighed. “I really do.”

Sunan snickered. “So,” he said conversationally, despite being pinned. “I think I’m all spring outed for the day.”

“Agreed,” Quy said, sighing at his children. “I’m going to go find your mother and your aunt and uncle.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Hope you enjoyed it. Kudos and comments are always appreciated! ^_^
> 
> Some notes...
> 
> Spring outings are a Qingming tradition, as are swings, sports, music, and other fun outdoor activities, but confusing children with historical rambles is probably not.
> 
> Here's Three Variations on the Melody of Plumblossoms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7VAWJBl0fE
> 
> Feel free to pity poor Fan Li, the randomly-mentioned chatterbox servant woman who's gonna get a visit from the Dai Li in the near future.
> 
> Also feel free to pity Kun, who is only three and four years older than Zan and Hoang respectively, and thus did indeed spend much of his childhood getting chewed on by babies. Part of him will always be grateful that Sunan and Wenli don't want any.
> 
> I guess we can kinda pity Niran, who was also chewed on by small children throughout his youth, but really don't feel too bad for him, his lifelong role as a babysitter gives him purpose and he secretly revels in it.
> 
> The story of Duke Er and Ji Tuan is basically copy/pasted from the story of Duke Wen of Jin, aka Prince Chong'er, and his loyal servant Jie Zhitui, albeit with name changes cuz I felt skeevy using the names of actual historical figures. Same with the long history of how the Cold Foods Festival and Qingming were separate, then combined, then changed a ton over the millennia, because history is never as straightforward as we like to simplify it. Duke Wen's story took place in Ancient China's Spring and Autumn period, and I like to think Ba Sing Se was established during the Earth Kingdom's equivalent of the Qin Dynasty, so Duke Er's story takes place about 2500 years pre-series, before the city had any walls, during a time period I'm still probably going to call the Spring and Autumn period in the Avatarverse.
> 
> This story is almost done! The final chapter will be posted next week. After that, I think I'm gonna try to finish another fic I've been working on, because I've had good luck recently getting stories done that I've had in my WIPs folder for years. It's not GG 2 - actually, it's not GG at all, though it can kinda be counted as a prequel I guess? - and it's about the Fire Army dealing with the horrors of snow during the first winter of Iroh's Siege while the Earth Army watches with popcorn. It's exactly as cracktastic as it sounds.
> 
> See you all next week!


	5. In Which the Evening is Pleasant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time for the last chapter! I would've had this up earlier but I've had a weird few days and forgot it was Wednesday. :P
> 
> Not really any warnings for this one? Tien and Quy briefly discuss the massacre again but, like, it's not in-depth and if you've made it this far you're probably fine.
> 
> Thank you so, so much to Stingrae, my beloved beta who listens to my rambles and helps me out every step of the way, and to Silver, who was a huge help with a lot of the cultural information used in writing this fic. You both rock! (lol Earth Kingdom puns) <3

When they got home, Ratana and Klahan beelined for the kitchen. Dinner was only a few hours away, and while the food would be served cold it still needed to be prepared. Quy followed after them with the vague idea of somehow being helpful, despite his in-laws’ insistence that there was no need.

He found his mother and Tien sitting at the table, a pot of tea between them. “How was Little Nanyue?” Quy asked, sitting down beside them for lack of anything better to do. Ratana and Klahan had already monopolized the counters and had things well in hand.

“It was alright,” Tien said, in that tone of voice that meant  _ our people are literally mourning the brutal destruction of our families, culture, and homeland, but all things considered it went well. _

“We had a nice lunch,” Phuong added, with a pointed glance at Tien, and Quy felt a bit of relief to know that his cousin wasn’t  _ completely _ starving herself. “And we got artichoke tea!” She nodded at the pot on the table. “Would you like some, dear?”

“Oh,” Quy said, looking at the pot with renewed interest. “Yes, please. Let me just get - ”

Klahan swept out of nowhere, put a empty cup in front of Quy, and went back to helping his wife with the rice cakes.

“Thank you!” Quy said, and he held the cup out to his mother. Phuong filled it, and Quy brought it to his nose to savor the smell. The liquid was golden-brown, and he felt an old, residual feeling of disappointment - as a child he’d always hoped the tea would turn out pink or purple, that was the color of artichoke flowers, after all -

Quy paused.

“This is made from the  _ flowers, _ right?” he asked.

Tien giggled and Phuong smirked. “Yes, dear,” his mother said. “This is the tea from the flowers.”

Mollified, Quy went in for a sip. Not that he didn’t like the stuff made from the stems, it was just that when he was expecting something sweet he didn’t want to end up with that bitter taste in his mouth. He’d fallen for  _ that _ practical joke more often than he cared to admit, and today it would be just the sort of thing Hoang would do to make her mother laugh.

Actually… He looked around. “Where’s Hoang?”

“Still out,” Tien said. “She’ll be home by sundown, I expect.”

Quy frowned. It wasn’t like Hoang to leave her mother alone, not on Qingming, not when they were all worried about Tien’s wellbeing. “Where is she?”

Tien smiled into her teacup. “With a boy.”

Quy blinked at her. “A  _ boy?” _ he repeated.

“It’s spring,” Tien said. “It’s a time for lovers.”

Quy sat back in his seat. “I...wasn’t aware there was a boy.”

“They’re taking it slow.”

“I wasn’t aware Hoang liked  _ anyone.” _

“Very, very slow,” Tien shrugged.

“Don’t feel bad, dear,” Phuong said to Quy. “I had no idea, either!”

That was all well and good, but Quy’s mother wasn’t a leader of the organization who made it their business to know everything about everyone. “Huh,” he said, thoroughly thrown for a loop.

Tien smirked. “Very extremely slow,” she reiterated. “He’s shy, and Hoang’s a Trung and she’s related to the Dais. I’d think it’d be a little overwhelming.”

“I can imagine,” Quy said absently, still mulling it over. He was the Dai Li’s Director of Administration - the files of every citizen in Ba Sing Se were at his fingertips, and he’d had no idea that his little cousin was interested in someone. It threw him, but at the same time he supposed it was nice that he didn’t know  _ everything. _ There were still surprises to be had - and pleasant ones, at that. “But…” he hesitated, glancing at Tien.

“But what?” she asked.

“It’s...it’s Qingming. Thanh Minh.”

Tien looked unimpressed. “What, so just because she was born out of our people’s tragedy, my daughter needs to be miserable all the time?”

“No,” Quy said quickly, “no, that’s not what I meant. It’s just…”

He trailed off, and they both knew what he was getting at. Appearances were important. There were only three Trungs left in the world, and their every word and action was over-examined by the surviving Nanyuese and the politicians of Ba Sing Se alike. Nobles scoffed at Hoang enough as it was, hemming and hawing over every aspect of her existence from her unfortunate appearance to her traditional Nanyuese fashion sense to her willingness to hold grudges on her family’s behalf. Enjoying yourself on Qingming was by no means nontraditional, but if the nobles decided that little Phuong-Hoang Trung wasn’t honoring her deceased family the way they thought she should, there would be gossip.

Tien sighed. “Qingming is as much a time for lovers as it is for the dead.”

“It is,” Quy agreed.

“And Hoang has more filial piety in her pinky finger than some nobles have in their entire family tree,” Tien said. “Especially considering that the homeland and ancestors she’s so fiercely devoted to are places she’s never been and people she’s never met.” She was fiddling with the mouse-deer statue again. “I want the next generation to be able to breathe and survive and  _ live _ past the massacre, Quy.”

“I know,” he said.

“And Hoang did her duty today and honored her ancestors,” Tien said. “Just as she’s done  _ literally every day _ since she was old enough to learn what it meant. She more than deserves a nice spring outing with a boy she likes. Anyone who complains that she isn’t filially pious enough has no idea what they’re talking about.”

“I know,” Quy said. “But people might still talk.”

Tien rolled her eyes. “In my experience, all people ever  _ do _ is talk. They never actually  _ do _ anything. If they  _ did, _ Nanyue might not be ashes. Let them talk. Our people are too busy  _ living _ to worry about what they have to say.”

“Well spoken,” Phuong muttered.

Quy nodded and had a long sip of his tea, enjoying the delicate, sweet taste for as long as he could before swallowing. “So,” he said, “what’s this boy like?”

* * *

The sun hung low in the sky, and dusk was upon them when Quy and Tien wandered out into the courtyard. Dinner wasn’t ready yet, but it would be soon, and Quy needed to alert the rest of the family. Tien went with him because Phuong had suggested it. Her melancholy mood from the morning had lifted somewhat, but Quy and Phuong were still worried about her. Fresh air, time with family - these were things that helped.

The cousins stepped out into the cool evening air together. The sky above was lavender, slowly turning an inky purple, and the flowers were closing their blossoms. Somewhere, a cricket-mouse chirped.

“Where are the kids?” Tien asked, looking at the empty garden.

Quy looked around in consternation for a moment before he heard laughter and chatter from up above, and then he looked up and saw the kites. Colorful paper sparrowkeets and a butterfly and worm and fish danced in the sky, and the strings led back down to five figures sitting around the badgermole statue on the green-tiled roof, silhouetted against the bit of sky that was still orange and pink. “Aha,” he said, pointing up for Tien’s benefit, and he walked towards the eaves. “Found you!”

Sunan grinned down at his father. “Want to come join us, Dad?” Beside him, Wenli was flying her sparrowkeet kite, her eyes fixed on the giant paper bird and her fingers deftly working the string to find the optimum length.

Quy grinned back and scaled the stone wall easily. He sat himself on the tiles next to Sunan and looked back down to where Tien peered up at them. “Would you like to come up, Tien?” Quy invited, daring to hope. It was rewarded after a moment, when she smiled and shook her head.

“Fine,” she said, and before Quy could offer to help her up with a bit of earthbending, she was scaling the wall herself, using the window and decorative carvings as hand- and footholds to pull herself up. Quy managed to take her hand when she reached the eaves and pulled her over the edge of the rooftop.

“I could have helped you, you know,” he said as she settled down beside him.

“I’ll take you up on that when I’m old and rickety and liable to break my hip,” she huffed. “I’ve climbed trees taller than this house, you know.”

“So you’ve told me,” Quy said.

“Would you like to fly a kite, Cousin Tien?” Zan asked. “You can have Kun’s.”

“Hey!” Kun snapped.

“I’m fine,” Tien snorted. “I’ll just watch you lot, if that’s alright.” She leaned back on the tiles and gazed up at the kites flying overhead.

It was silent for a moment, save for the sound of the breeze whipping through the kite-tails. Quy tilted his head up and watched Kun’s flying fish circle under Niran’s long worm. Zan’s butterfly hovered nearby, and Sunan and Wenli’s matching sparrowkeets flew together, their strings extended so far the kite’s shadows fell in the neighbor’s courtyard. Little paper lanterns dangled from each kite-string, giving off a soft golden light.

They weren’t the only ones kite-flying, Quy noticed. He saw other kites hovering in the air in the distance, their strings trailing back down into courtyards and to figures perched on rooftops. All of them bore lanterns, and the little lights twinkled in the twilight of the city like a thousand stars.

“Did you know,” Niran said, “that down in the southern provinces by the Si Wong Desert, they have kite-flying competitions where the strings are covered in powdered glass, and competitors try to cut each other’s kites free?”

“Thank the spirits we don’t do that here,” Kun huffed, looking up at his fish. “Zan would probably cut all my kites.”

Zan shot him a cheeky grin.

“Well we’re gonna have to cut a kite anyway,” Niran said, picking up a simple yellow kite that no one had claimed yet. “It’s good luck.”

“Is it really good luck?” Kun mused. “It takes away the bad luck, yeah, but does that necessarily mean it brings good luck? I’d think it’d just knock us up to neutral luck.”

“That’s still  _ better _ luck,” Zan said.

“Exactly,” Niran said. “Now who wants to get this thing in the air?”

Before Quy could offer, Wenli said, “I will.” She handed her sparrowkeet kite off to Sunan, who kept its string from entangling in his own kite’s with no small amount of skill. Niran handed the plain yellow kite off to Wenli, and she held it up against the breeze for a moment, the fragile paper shuddering against the air. Then she released it, letting the string zip free in rapid circles as the kite flew high into the evening sky. It was a little hard to see, way up there. This kite had no lanterns on its tail - it wouldn’t do to send off a vessel of bad luck with the ability to burn things.

Wenli let the kite fly tethered for a few moments before she touched her hand to the roof tiles. The green stone slid easily over her hand until she had a full glove, the fingers longer and sharper than the Dai Li usually made them. With one fluid motion, Wenli sliced through the kite-string, and part of it fluttered down into her lap while the rest of it floated off with the kite. The yellow paper flew even higher and farther away, twisting and turning in the wind currents until it was nothing but a speck in the dark purple sky.

“Nice,” Sunan said. “Looks like it’s going far away.”

“I hope so,” Wenli hummed, taking back her sparrowkeet kite.

“Hey, look,” Zan said suddenly, pointing over the rooftop toward the street. A figure was walking towards their front gate. “Hoang’s home.”

Tien sat up and peeked over the roof. At the sight of her daughter she brightened immediately. “Excuse me,” she said, and before Quy could offer his assistance she hopped down from the roof into the courtyard. There was a yelp, and Quy looked over the edge to see that Tien had nearly landed on top of Ratana. “Sorry!” Tien said quickly, and then she was hurrying toward the gate. Ratana looked after her for a moment before turning her gaze up to the rooftop.

“Aha,” she said.  _ “There _ you all are. I was just looking for you.”

“Is dinner ready?” Sunan asked.

“Yes, but we were thinking we’d eat in the courtyard,” Ratana said. “You lot want to help move the furniture outside?”

“Ooh!” Zan said, winding up her kite string. The butterfly kite slowly came back down to earth. “A nighttime picnic sounds great.”

“Be right down, Mom!” Niran promised, already packing away his long worm kite. Zan wound up her string and gently dropped her butterfly over the edge of the roof before hopping down herself. Niran followed after her, and then Sunan and Wenli, sparrowkeet kites in hand. Quy sat at the roof’s edge, his legs dangling over the eaves, and he glanced back at Kun. His son was still reeling in his fish.

“Are you coming?” he asked.

“I’ll be down in a minute,” Kun said, the words a little heavy.

Quy gave his son a quick once-over. “It’s been a long day,” he offered.

Kun snorted. “Yeah. And I should probably get to bed in a few hours. Need to get back to the lake tomorrow…” Tomorrow was still technically the weekend, but Quy was a director and thus usually had the luxury of a normal weekly schedule. Kun had voluntarily joined the Dai Li branch with the least regular hours, and for him proper weekends were few and far between.

Quy pulled his legs back up onto the roof tiles and pushed himself farther up so that he sat closer to his son. “You look tired.”

Kun snorted again. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Yeah.” He was silent for a moment, winding up his kitestring, and then he confided, “Things are picking up. I’m sure you know, it’s been in reports.”

Quy nodded. “Yes, I’ve heard. Criminal activity’s been on the rise.”

“Especially  _ incoming _ activity,” Kun said. “We had smugglers the other day. They barely wasted any time after the Fire Nation left - they got right back into the city as quick as they could. It almost makes me miss the Siege - ”

Quy’s blood went cold. “No,” he said, very firmly. “Don’t say that.”

Kun was silent for a moment. “I said  _ almost,” _ he said at length. “And I’d  _ never _ say that around Cousin Tien. You know I wouldn’t.” He turned from Quy to look at the sea of rooftops sprawled across the Upper Ring and the enormous wall towering in the distance. “I...tried to imagine all of this on fire, those last few days.”

Quy followed Kun’s gaze and grimaced. “So did I,” he said. “But it’s not going to be. It never will.”

“And thank Oma and Shu for that,” Kun said. “But there’s still so much to be done. The city’s in more danger from itself than anything else, and now that the Fire Nation’s out of the way we’re going to get more crime from the outside, and there’s a servant girl a block over who I need to report because even when people are perfectly safe they just don’t know how to keep their mouths shut.” He sighed and closed his eyes and leaned back against the stone badgermole.

“It’s thankless work,” Quy agreed. “But someone has to do it, and I’m proud that you do.”

Kun smiled, eyes still closed. “Not entirely thankless, then,” he hummed. “Thanks yourself for all the paperwork you keep nice and neat. Really does come in handy sometimes.”

Quy clapped a hand to his son’s shoulder. “Only sometimes?”

“I mean it’s an utter pain in the ass until we need to reference something,” Kun said, opening his eyes to shoot Quy a smirk. “Then it’s a life-saver. Sometimes literally.”

Quy chuckled, thinking of the shelves and shelves of paperwork he maintained under Lake Laogai, each of them stuffed to the brim with citizens’ files and incident reports and all sorts of other potentially useful pieces of information that agents hated having to fill out but were always relieved to find when they needed it. If working in the Dai Li was a thankless job, then working in the Administration Branch was even more so. But Quy had his subordinates to help.

Subordinates that now included a brainwashed Firebender.

Quy grimaced. He’d been doing so  _ well _ not thinking about that, too.

Kun was looking down into the courtyard now, and Quy followed his gaze. Zan and Wenli were setting up the table and cushions under Phuong’s supervision. Sunan and Niran were lighting strings of paper lanterns that hung from the trees. Tien and Hoang were sitting by the koi pond, Tien smiling at her daughter while Hoang shyly fiddled with a flower.

“Do,” Kun started, and then he fell silent.

“Hm?” Quy asked.

Kun grimaced. “Maybe it’s just Qingming and all the thinking about ancestors, but...do you think they’d understand?” Down below, Roulan, Ratana, and Klahan came out with platters of food. “History’s important, our cultural heritage needs to be preserved,  _ I get it. _ But I...I’m protecting what’s important to  _ me, _ too.” He nodded down at their family. “Do you think our ancestors would understand?”

Quy watched Niran and Sunan finish up with the lanterns, leaving the garden lit with a soft gold glow. “I can’t really speak for dead people, son,” he said. “Most of them died long before you or I were born, and while I know they all held Avatar Kyoshi’s original mandate sacred, they also weren’t ever up against anything like we are. The world was different back then.” No one had  _ ever _ thought there’d be a war this massive, this long, and all one nation against the other three. No one had ever thought an entire elemental population could be wiped out. No one had ever thought the world could become so unbalanced. “I think it’s more important that  _ you _ understand  _ them. _ Honor them as best you can. They’ll understand that, at least.”

“I figured,” Kun said quietly, and he nudged Quy’s shoulder with his own. “Thanks Dad.”

Quy smiled at his son. He was proud of him, truly, though Kun had always been different from the rest of the family - he wasn’t a historian like his siblings, and though Roulan had fought with Long Feng over his changes to the Dai Li, Kun had leapt headfirst into those changes and gotten himself into Investigations. Quy had only ever supported Long Feng with paperwork. Kun had his stone-clad boots on the ground, enacting the Grand Secretariat’s will. Quy and Roulan didn’t begrudge their son’s life choices, but his career had turned out so different from anything they’d ever expected. His work was  _ important, _ there was no denying that. Kun had snuffed out conspiracies and shut down plots and saved lives.

“I know I’ve said this before,” Quy said, “but you’re a good Dai Li agent. A  _ different _ kind of Dai Li agent” - Kun knew it, it was impossible not to, born and raised in a Dai Li family, he knew the way in which he was Dai Li was very,  _ very _ different from what Dai Li agents historically were - “but a  _ good _ agent nonetheless.”

Kun smiled. “Thanks,” he said again, quiet and grateful.

It was natural for children to want their parents’ love and approval. It was natural for people to want their family’s understanding and reassurance.

Quy’s thoughts were once again intruded upon by the Firebender - of the mess of a human being the boy had been before he’d become Xiaofan the perfect colonial transplant, of how the boy had so plainly missed his father. He was getting  _ so _ tired of thinking about him.

“Well,” Kun said. “Guess we should head down for dinner.” He dropped his fish kite to the ground and slid down one of the columns. Quy took another look at his family in the garden below before following suit.

He sat down at the table between Roulan and Hoang. “Did you enjoy your afternoon?” he asked his little cousin, and Hoang flushed.

“It was nice,” she said, smiling into the flowers she still held - a single cluster of hydrangeas and leaves at the end of a long stem. Quy blinked at it, nonplussed - hydrangeas weren’t exactly a traditional present between lovers, but, well...maybe this boy didn’t have access to orchids. Or maybe he just didn’t care for symbolism, in which case Quy would do his best not to judge because not everyone could be as detail-oriented as the Dai Li. The hydrangeas were pink, at least.

“So, is this official?” Zan asked from where she sat opposite her cousin. She reached across the table with her chopsticks to poke at Hoang. “Like, is this really happening?”

“Oh my spirits,” Hoang said, and she buried her face in the hydrangeas.

“I want  _ details, _ Hoang!” Zan insisted, looking at the flowers. She made a face, and Quy smirked - he wasn’t the only one who cared about symbolism. If anyone ever attempted to court his daughter they would have to be  _ extremely _ precise in their choice of bouquets. “Who is it, anyway? Is it that guy you met at university? Uh, what was his name…”

“No,” Hoang sighed, “not him. It’s Cadao.”

“Cadao,” Zan repeated. “Cadao, Cadao...wait, the  _ musician? Oooooooh.” _

Hoang stuffed an entire roll of steamed swallow bread into her mouth. Beside her, Tien snickered.

“Well,” Zan said, still mulling over the new information. “Well, he  _ is _ cute, even I can see that, and at the last Mid-Autumn Festival he  _ really _ made that lithophone sing. I mean, it’s made out of rocks. Anyone who can make music out of rocks must be a good person. What’s his bending like?”

“Cadao’s not an earthbender,” Hoang said.

Zan’s face fell. “Aw, shame,” she said, glancing at her brothers and Wenli and Niran. “We were six for six so far in our generation...oh well.”

Hoang shrugged.

“So when’s the wedding?” Kun asked.

Hoang shot him an exasperated look. “I’ll get back to you on that in a few years,” she said. “Right now, we’re just planning to have a date with some friends next week.”

“That already sounds way more exciting than Sunan and Wenli’s whirlwind romance of copying each other’s history notes and arguing over pottery shards.”

Wenli flicked a pebble at him.

_ “When _ are you getting a boyfriend so I can tease you?” Sunan asked.

“Never,” Kun said dryly, “just to spite you.”

Sunan looked unconvinced.

“But seriously,” Kun said, “half your relationship is literally based on pottery shards - ”

“That’s not how you use  _ literally - ” _

“ - seriously, we can’t get through a single  _ day _ in this family without arguing over pottery, like over at Grandma’s today - ”

“Oh my spirits!” Zan burst out suddenly, and she whirled in her seat to look at Niran farther down the table. “Niran! You remember the other week when someone ruined that pottery exhibit and we thought it was the university students being brats?  _ It was Uncle Mu.” _

_ “What? _ Why can’t that man just stay retired?”

“My thoughts precisely!”

Zan, Niran, Sunan, and Wenli immediately devolved into ranting about ancient, retired Dai Li agents who needed to keep their noses out of other people’s museum exhibits, and Kun sat back a bit. After a moment he looked at Hoang, who was staring in surprise at her cousins’ ramblings and the sudden turn in the conversation. He caught her gaze and shot her a smile, and after a few seconds she grinned back and mouthed a silent  _ thank you. _

Quy turned his attention from his children to his food. Dinner was cold and delicious - millennium eggs, steamed bread cut and shaped like swallows, peach blossom porridge, and carved fruit - but best of all were the rice balls. Qingtuan were little green, glutinous balls made of rice flour, filled with sesame paste - a traditional Qingming food. In Quy’s family, they also had banh troi, glutinous white rice balls filled with red bean paste and a piece of sugar, made according to the old Trung recipe. Quy helped himself to as many as he dared - they were surprisingly sweet and sat heavy in the stomach.

“You know,” he commented to Hoang as he picked up one of his banh troi, “once, when I was a child, my Uncle Chien let me eat as many of these as I wanted until I was sick in the garden.” He nodded at the flower bed just a few feet from the table.

Hoang snickered. “Yeah?” she asked. She already knew this story. Quy had already told her all the stories of her grandfather he could remember. But retelling never hurt.

“My mother yelled at him so much for that,” Quy said.

Beside Tien, Phuong snorted. “You’d better believe I did. My little brother ought to have  _ known _ better than to let a small child get sick on sweets!”

“He must have learned his lesson, then,” Tien said. “He never made the same mistake with me.”

Phuong snorted and Hoang giggled, and Quy smiled wanly. They all knew that Chien had never made that mistake with his own daughter because by the time Tien had been born in Nanyue, there hadn’t been enough sweets to get sick on.

When dinner was wrapping up, Zan suddenly asked, “Hey, anyone in the mood for some earthball?”

“Me!” Hoang said instantly.

“Ooh!” Roulan said, and she looked at Quy with wide puppy-cub eyes. He gave an agreeing smirk and a nod, and she grinned. “We’re in!”

“I need to get to sleep,” Kun started, and Zan pouted at him.

“Aw, Kun, come on, we’d need you to keep the teams even!”

Kun gave her a long look, and then he sighed, smiled, and shook his head. “Fine. But just one round, alright?”

“Yes!” Zan said, jumping up and immediately helping Ratana and Klahan clear the table. With the whole family pitching in, the work was done in no time; the dishes were stacked and ready for washing, the table was returned to its rightful place in the kitchen, and Quy found himself in the third courtyard with his wife and children.

The third courtyard was different from the first two - it was located in the back of the house, surrounded by the family’s living quarters, and was therefore less formal and more personal. The gardens were just as beautiful as those in the front courtyards, but some of the plants were different - here they grew things Phuong had managed to bring from her homeland, including a Nanyuese golden cypress, and there were also fruit trees and a garden reserved for growing vegetables. But the real difference was the barren plot of solid, packed earth, littered with rocks that’d been shattered and reformed more times than Quy could remember. This was the family’s training grounds - where Quy had coaxed his children through bending their first boulders, where he’d been taught the art by his father, who’d learned it from his own parents on the very same soil.

The training field made for a decent earthball pitch as well, once it’d been smoothed out and set up properly.

“Alright!” Zan grinned, bending a pair of stone nets up from the ground on either side of the playing field. Beside her, Niran idly kicked the ball around, getting needlessly fancy with his feet. “One round of sudden death, first score wins. Four on four, everyone’s offense and everyone’s goalie.” She looked around at the assembled earthbenders and asked, “Guys versus girls?”

“Sounds good,” Niran said, punting the ball a good ten feet in the air only to spin around and catch it behind him on a bent leg, kick it over his shoulder, and catch it in his hands.

“You’re going down, love,” Wenli cooed at Sunan.

“I’ll remind you you said that when we beat you,” he hummed back.

“Seriously, were you and Mom that hopelessly pathetic?” Kun asked Quy.

Quy grinned. “Your mother, Solada, and myself were  _ fifty percent more _ hopelessly pathetic.”

Kun groaned.  _ “Dad.” _

Quy chuckled as he went to get into position. Looked like he’d be facing off against Roulan. Well, that wouldn’t last long. To his right, Sunan was matched up against Hoang, Kun with Zan, and Niran with Wenli.

The rest of the family sat on the porch, Phuong and Tien sharing a pot of artichoke tea, Ratana working on some embroidery, and Klahan at the very edge of his seat, prepared to act as referee. “You all ready?” he asked when the ball was set down in the middle of the pitch.

“Ready!” Zan answered, her eyes locked with Kun. Beside her, Wenli shifted slightly. Niran kept his eyes on her feet.

Klahan grinned. “Go!”

Zan and Kun both dove for the ball. Wenli immediately kicked at the ground beneath Kun, but Niran pushed her back and Kun got away with the ball. “Ha!” he crowed, taking a few steps back. Niran pressed his advantage, forcing Wenli farther back, while Sunan slid past Hoang and ran farther down the field. She whirled and chased after him, ready to block him from whatever passes Kun and Niran attempted.

Quy’s face-off with Roulan went about as he’d expected - they were at a stalemate, matching each other step for step.

“Sweet spirits,” Quy snorted as Roulan blocked his every move and he blocked hers in turn.

“I mean, we knew this would happen,” she said. They’d been partners in the Dai Li for so long before they’d split into different branches, it was only natural that they were so well attuned to each other. When a few more seconds passed and neither had managed to move very far from where they’d started, she offered, “Break on three?”

“One,” he agreed.

“Two,” she said.

“Three!” They split apart. Roulan immediately went for Kun, who yelped and kicked the ball to Niran. Zan moved to intercept, but Quy blocked her.

“Hi sweetie,” he said.

She grinned at him. “Out of the way, old man!”

Quy felt the earth move beneath his feet. By the time he’d managed to turn himself back around, he was ten feet from where he wanted to be and Zan and Wenli were closing in on Niran. Niran managed to kick the ball in Sunan’s general direction before Wenli made the ground explode under him. Sunan got to the ball before Hoang did, and Quy was torn between helping directly by running interference with Hoang, or indirectly by breaking up Zan and Wenli’s teamwork.

He went for Zan. Dai Li partners were not to be underestimated, after all, and her and Wenli’s dynamic needed to be counteracted. With any luck, Quy would manage to keep them separated and distracted, and Niran would be able to help Sunan once he was back on his feet.

Kun was already running to his brother’s aid, only to be blocked by Roulan. “MOM! Oh my spirits!”

“Yeah, you’re not getting past me,” she grinned, riding through every rockslide he threw at her. “I’ve seen you play earthball at the lake, young man, I know exactly how much of a threat you are.”

“That’s with  _ Lee,” _ Kun said, trying once again to get past his mother.

“Oh, so just because your partner isn’t here you think I’ll underestimate you?”

“You and Dad aren’t working together and I’m  _ certainly _ not underestimating  _ you _ \- HAHA!” Kun managed to dodge around a rock Roulan had raised up and dashed farther down the field, where he helped Niran block Hoang and Wenli from Sunan and the ball. Quy still had his hands full with Zan, blocking her every attempt to rejoin up with her partner, but Wenli wasn’t phased. She managed to sideswipe Niran and zip around Kun while Hoang kept him distracted, earth-surfing in a full circle until she came face-to-face with Sunan, who drew up short right before he ran into her. Wenli grinned, dove in, pecked him on the nose, and kicked the ball away towards Hoang while Sunan blinked at her.

“Oh my  _ goddess,” _ Kun spluttered, and he chased after Hoang until Roulan knocked him off his feet and into Niran, who’d only just gotten back up.

“Go Mom!” Zan shouted, and Quy abandoned her to intercept Hoang. It wasn’t to be, however - Zan swept the ground beneath his feet, and though he managed to keep his balance he wasn’t able to dodge Wenli when she came to assist her partner.

Sunan made a last-ditch attempt to make Hoang stumble, sending a ridge of stone after her, but Hoang slid over the rupture and kicked the ball into the net with nary a misstep.

“Goal!” Klahan shouted. “Ladies’ team wins!”

“Yes!” Zan grinned, hi-fiving Wenli.

Quy grinned at them. “Well,” he said, brushing some dust from his clothes. “That was fun.”

Sunan came to Wenli’s side, and she wrapped her arms around him. “Told you you were going down.”

“Yeah, you told me,” he grinned, putting an arm around her shoulder. He was breathing a little heavily, and Wenli studied his face for a moment.

“Are you alright?” she asked. “You didn’t overexert yourself, did you?”

“I’m fine,” he promised.

Kun approached them, waving his arms. “Seriously, Sunan?” Kun complained to his brother. “You just let her distract you like that?”

“You gotta admit, the earth-surfing-kiss-distraction combo was pretty effective,” Sunan said, hugging Wenli close. “You should think about doing that in Investigations.”

“I am  _ not _ kissing criminals on the nose,” Kun said dryly. Wenli giggled.

Quy left them to their banter and headed toward the porch, where Hoang had already sat down beside her mother and was pouring out a cup of artichoke tea.

“Nice shot,” he told her.

Hoang beamed at him. “Thanks, Uncle Quy.” She held out the teacup, and he accepted it with a smile.

A moment later he was gagging.  _ “Hoang!” _

“Oh, right,” Hoang hummed, sipping her own drink. “This is the stuff from the stems.” Beside her, Tien was laughing.

“You could have warned me,” Quy huffed, not really upset. Tien was still giggling, and it was a good sound.

Niran was sitting beside his parents, idly bending dust, dirt, and gravel from his robes. “We probably should’ve changed out of our nice clothes before playing,” he said.

“Oh, you’re more than capable of cleaning it properly,” Ratana said, carefully working on her embroidery.

“Forget the dirt,” Klahan laughed, clapping Niran’s shoulder. “You got  _ clobbered, _ son.”

Niran snorted. “That’s one word for it,” he agreed.

“Zan’s right. You might wanna work on your technique.”

“Of course I’m right!” Zan said, coming over. Kun and Roulan were following after her, but Sunan and Wenli were on the other side of the courtyard, climbing the columns back up to the roof. “I’m always right!”

“You aren’t right about dating Sang Dynasty pottery,” Niran huffed.

Zan bristled. “Alright, first off, it wasn’t Sang Dynasty, it was  _ very clearly _ a Meng Dynasty  _ replica, _ and secondly - ”

“Alright,” Kun said, holding up his hands, “that’s it, I’m done. I’ve had enough pottery arguments in one day to last me for a month, it’s way past my bedtime, and I need to be up early tomorrow. I’m going to bed.”

Before he could take a single step, however, Zan was suddenly hugging him. Kun stared down at her. “Thanks for playing,” she said into his chest.

Kun was taken aback for a moment, but then he grinned and wrapped his arms around her. “No prob, sis.”

She pulled back. “You have a good day at work tomorrow.”

“You have a good day off tomorrow,” he snarked back, already turning to head in. He gave a casual wave over his shoulder. “Goodnight.”

“Night!”

Kun headed toward the house, waving goodnight as he passed the porch. Quy reached out and grabbed his son’s hand as he passed by. “You stay safe,” he ordered.

Kun blinked down at him for a moment before smiling. “Sure thing,” he said. “You keep that paperwork filed. Never know when I’ll need it to crack a case!”

Quy chuckled and released his son’s hand, and he watched Kun’s retreating back as his son headed in for the night. Kun would be gone come morning, and Quy could only hope that his work schedule remained sane enough that he might see him for dinner. Quy himself had off tomorrow, but the day after he’d be back at the lake, sorting paperwork and asking his subordinates about their weekend and -

\- and dealing with a brainwashed Firebender.

Quy stared into his artichoke tea and didn’t let himself think for a few moments.

Roulan came and sat down beside him, oblivious to his train of thought. “It was a good day,” she said, leaning into his shoulder.

“Yes,” Quy murmured into his cup, “a good day.” He raised the cup to his lips, closing his eyes as he sipped and just...let the moment wash over him. He felt Roulan pressed into his side, heard the rest of their family all around them. Phuong and Tien were talking lightly with Hoang about a friend they’d visited that day. Zan and Niran were quietly muttering about pottery, and Klahan and Ratana were making small talk about the moon. Quy couldn’t hear Kun’s footsteps anymore, but he knew his son was heading for his room, just as he knew that Sunan and Wenli were canoodling up on the roof - probably the northwest corner, he thought. The decorative statues there were placed in such a way that they were comfortable to sit against, and the view was good. Spirits knew he, Roulan, and Solada had gone up there together often enough to know.

“Any plans for tomorrow?” Roulan asked.

Quy opened his eyes. “No,” he said. “Did you have any?”

She shrugged. “Not really.”

“What about the kids?”

“Kun’s working, obviously. Otherwise, I think we’re all home.”

“Then...let’s just...stay in,” he said. “Let’s just be together, for a while.”

She looked at him for a moment, and then she smiled. “That sounds nice.”

Quy closed his eyes again and leaned into her. “Yes,” he said. “Yes it does.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're done! Thank you so much to all my readers. :) If you made it this far and you haven't left kudos or a comment yet, please do! I'd love to hear from you. Same goes if you're reading this long after it's posted; your words will still be appreciated. ^_^
> 
> Some notes!
> 
> Artichoke tea is an actual thing from Vietnam, but I haven't had the chance to try it. As Quy made abundantly clear, tho, the flower part is sweet, while the stems are bitter.
> 
> I already touched on this topic with Zan two chapters ago, but Kun's rooftop conversation with Quy alludes to the differences among the Dai Li these days. While the Dai Li have been a terrifying force ever since Avatar Kyoshi established them ~400 years ago, their purpose and methods have changed in the last 14 years, ever since King Kuei was crowned and Long Feng came to power. Stingrae and I have created some lengthy and wonderfully-worldbuildy headcanon around this. In some ways, things have gotten better, but a lot has also gotten worse, and many of the old guard Dai Li and the Preservation Branch are always gonna be upset at Long Feng for changing so much. More on that as the series progresses.
> 
> Hydrangeas have a lot of different meanings depending on the time period and place, but the color pink generally means romantic love, in some parts of Asia (Japan, at least) the flower can be used to convey apologies, and a general meaning for the plant could be "thank you for understanding."
> 
> A Chinese roommate of mine once had me try some sesame-filled glutinous rice balls - idk if they were qingtuan, exactly, but they were _super_ sweet in a really heavy kind of way. They were only as big as large cherries, and I only managed to eat three.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at gilded-green or caelum-in-the-avatarverse! The gilded-green blog deals with Gilded Green-specific things, so if you're curious about writing progress or updates that's the place to check out. Or just chat with me. I'm always up for chatting!
> 
> I have a bunch of fics I need to work on, and I also need to beat GG 2 into shape. Right now though, the next fic I'm gonna seriously try to get out is called Weather's Frightful But Fire's Delightful, a humorous crackfic dealing with the first winter of Iroh's Siege, starring nationalistic-little-shit!Lu Ten, totally-not-dead-yet!Jouin, and this-is-the-first-time-he's-been-featured-in-a-fic-and-all-he-wants-is-a-cup-of-coffee!Kenta. Hopefully the first chapter will be up in a week.
> 
> Thanks again to all my readers! ^_^

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you liked it, please please leave kudos or a review! It's super appreciated. :)
> 
> I'm also on Tumblr at http://caelum-in-the-avatarverse.tumblr.com/ and Gilded Green has a Tumblr at http://gilded-green.tumblr.com/ if you're interested. Feel free to chat at me!
> 
> I have four more chapters of this to go, and they'll be posted weekly. So keep an eye out next.....Tuesday? Maybe Wednesday. Probably Wednesday. I actually have off then. Let's aim for Wednesday.


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